Found
by Zarame
Summary: The entire Weiss team is injured in a mission gone wrong, Aya most of all. But just when they think things are at their lowest, a man out for revenge unintentionally destroys some of the things they took for granted. Some pairings made later in the story.
1. Blood

Most of the mission was a blur. The clearest parts being even before they had gotten to the site. Omi had hacked into the drug dealers security systems and given them a ten minute freeze of an internal security. He was then to pick off all the perimeter guards while the rest of the team went into the building and took out the target. They got into the building quite easily. _Too easily_, and that had made everyone a little jumpy and uneasy. When they ran into the nearly countless bodyguards in the halls and tripped nearly every alarm in the building the mission was nearly a failure. Being saved only by the fact that they had killed the target.

Abyssinian, having been separated from the rest of his team, didn't see Ken go down. Nor had he seen Omi take the shot in his shoulder. He had seen Yohji get thrown into a wall by a particularly burly guard. They both took Omi and Ken down to the car, Yohji staggering so much that it was a toss-up on who was helping whom with him and Ken. Aya had carried a limp Omi and stuffed him into the back of the Seven. Yohji had tried to incoherently protest Aya driving his car, until Abyssinian had forcibly shoved him into the passenger seat and slammed the door. Yohji had been unconscious before the engine started.

The memories from then on were scattered, incomplete. Streaked car lights and looming stop signs that were absently ignored. It was a small miracle that they didn't collide with anyone. The back door to the Koneko was a welcome relief.

He would never be sure how he had gotten them inside, or for that matter up to their rooms. He remembered bandaging Yohji. Wrapping thick gauze around his head trough shoulder length blonde hair limp and slick with blood. He remembered Ken's pale face and cleaning blood off his arms. Omi and a half empty bottle of antiseptic.

The last thought Aya had as he collapsed onto his bed, shakily wrapped bandages around the blood seeping wounds in his side, was rather pointless. When boiled down to its simplest form consisted of the words, "I hate being sick," before he was lost to oblivion.

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Don't judge by the first chapter, it is meat to sound really funky and is less than a quarter of the size of the other chapters. 


	2. Doors

Gomenasai. School started. I'll try to have more consistant updates in the future. Tell me if you like it.

* * *

Yohji's eyes hurt. No, scratch that, his whole body hurt, but the sunlight seeping into his room through the open door made him clench his eyes shut against the glaring pain. The rhythmic pounding in his skull that sounded like some rock band gone mad didn't help much.

Wait. Open door?

He jacked knifed up off the bed only to sway dizzily as the room spun around him. The jangled twang of the off tune guitar and broken drummer that had taken up residence in his head got noticeably louder. When the room rested into a reasonable tilt instead of a swirl, Yohji felt confident enough to release the white knuckled hold he had had on the bed. Reaching up he felt the bandages around head and the nearly golf ball sized lump on his temple.

What the hell had happened? Yohji remembered the mission that they had gone on the night (was it really just a night?) before. Go in, kill the target, get out. Easy.

And it had gone wrong.

Ken had gotten caught off guard in an ambush. He had collapsed from wounds and exhaustion a few minutes after Omi had gotten shot. The devoted chibi had actually tried to rescue them all on his own. It had taken Aya, charging into the room at warp speed, katana a silvery arc above his head, to take down the guards with his deadly dance. Yohji had felt cold hands enclose around his neck and then everything went kinda blurry. He remember being slammed into the wall and having darkness erode away at the edges of his vision…

And then waking up sprawled on top of the covers of his bed.

Pushing himself up off the bed, he lurched over to the door. He had to grip the frame for a few seconds to catch his breath. Across the hall Ken's door was wide open as well. The usual mess that seemed to follow the soccer fanatic where ever he went was spread out on the floor. Soccer balls and jerseys were mixed in with random candy wrappers and the occasional dead flower. As to why Ken would want flowers in his room after spending an entire day with then in the shop Yohji had no idea, but hey, it wasn't his room.

Inside the room, collapsed haphazardly on the bed, was Ken. He was covered in bandages black with dried blood. His hair glistened with the damp gleam of wet blood. His head was turned towards the door, his mouth open slightly like a child's in sleep. There was the smallest puddle of drool on the bedspread.

Sighing with relief at finding Ken relatively alright, Yohji felt the corners of his mouth curve up in amusement. Ken looked like someone who had gone through a bit of rough sex, though the blissful expression was probably from very good drugs rather than any nighttime experimentation. Bit of a depressing thought, that.

Yohji walked on slightly steadier feet over to Omi's room. Finding the door open he looked in to see Omi curled up on the floor. One hand was tucked up under his blonde locks and the other was resting negligently on his thigh. Careful not to jar Omi's wounded and bandaged shoulder Yohji picked him up and tucked him into bed. This was harder than it should have been since the room started doing its own personal imitation of a spinning top when Yohji had bent over to pick Omi up. The blonde's incoherent mumble of protest would have made Yohji grin, except for the fact that he couldn't. All of his concentration went into staying vertical.

After a few seconds of struggle Yohji had gotten his body, and the room, under control. Satisfied that both Omi and Ken were, while a little worse for wear, alright, Yohji went to stand in front of Aya's door, the only one of the four that was closed. Reaching out to knock on the door, deliberately making the sound to soft to be heard, Yohji waited a second before barging in, his little white lie prepared.

"Now, Aya, don't kill me. Omi order me to come in and check on you since…"

He stopped mid-sentence, staring at the picture before him, for a second forgetting to breathe. Then he lunged toward the bed.

"Shit, Aya."


	3. Bandages

Hopefully I'll start updating about every two weeks. And get longer chapters.

* * *

His breathing was still ragged. As it had been for the last twenty minutes Yohji had sat at Aya's side pulling back damp hair from a feverish face and checking wounds. A deep jagged gash marred Aya from rib bones to hip. The bandages that had been clumsily rapped around his torso were completely drenched in blood. The sheets were a dried rusty black and stiff to the touch.

It was…unnerving, to say the least, tosee Aya like this. Wounded, bleeding, face twisted in pain. He must have been conscious since he reacted to Yohji's touch, but the reactions were sluggish and elicited faint moans. He didn't even seem to register Yohji's being in the room.

He looked fragile. Aya had always been the dark, invincible assassin of the night, and as much as that sounded like the character profile of an action adventure villain, for Aya it was true. But this…this wasn't an invincible person and even while Yohji was thinking 'Yes! He's human' he didn't like watching it. Having Aya this hurt went a good way towards upsetting how he thought the world was run.

A small movement caused Yohji to look down at the bloody mess his silent housemate had become. His flushed face was tossed to the side, cheek cradled in a sweat soaked pillow. His fingers, alreadytangled in the sheets, clenched as Yohji watched. A low, barely audible moan that Yohji had to lean forward to catch the tail end of escaped between clenched teeth.

Yeah, he was conscious, and feeling every bit of the beating he had taken to save them.

"Hey, Aya? Can you hear me?" Yohji asked softly, reaching tentatively towards Aya. Maybe if he touched him he wouldn't feel the fever, the slick blood under his fingertips that coated Aya skin. Maybe Aya would be just fine. Another low moan of pain sounded. Yeah, right.

Aya's hand closed like a vise grip around Yohji's, startling him into a yelp. Nails that Yohji had never thought before to describe as long and sharp bit into his skin and drew blood. The thin crescents hurt like a bitch.

"Yohji?"

Yohji jumped a foot and nearly fell off the chair he was sitting in at the sound of the soft strained voice. Spinning around as much as he could with Aya fingers still digging into his hand, he spotted Omi. The kid had the arm that belonged to his injured shoulder cradled tochest and was leaning heavily against the doorframe.

"Don't scare me like that Chibi!"

Completely ignoring Yohji's use of the hated nickname Omi said, "Is he…is Aya…Is he okay?"

Yohji was tempted to raise an eyebrow. Maybe Omi was high on painkillers. "No Omi, I doubt it. He's more hurt then the rest of us." Did Aya _look_ okay?

"Oh. Um, are you okay?"

"Yeah. Just some bruises and a headache. You should be in bed, ya know? Looks like the wind could tip you over."

"Shut up. I want to know if Aya's alright." Omi voice went a little hazy. "He…I don't remember what happened."

"You and Ken got pummeled and I was just blacking out when Aya came to our rescue."

"Oh, but…but how did he get us home? Like that?"

'Like...'? Oh, being hurt. Omi was definitely high on painkillers if he was mutilating grammar. Come to think of it, he hadn't corrected Yohji earlier. The kid really needed to be in bed if he was this out of it; he hadn't even gone totally mother hen over Aya yet. Hell, he should be blowing people's eardrums out yelling for a doctor, Aya definitely needed one. Wait,Yohji hadn't thought about that. They needed to get Aya checked out, and soon, and Yohji hadn't even considered it. Maybe he gotten hit harder than he'd realized.

"Yohji?"

"What? Oh, no. No.I have no idea how he got us home. You should go back to bed Omi."

"No, I'm going to go check on Ken. Be right back."

Omi turned and walked rather unsteadily out of sight.

------------------------------  


"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, owwww! That freaking hurts! Goddamn stupid bandages! I swear I'll…I'll do _something_ to whoever had the bright idea to bind these bandages this tight. Are they trying to make me lose my fingers?"

Ken nearly tripped over his own shoes as he made his way towards his door. Pins-and-needles were crawling like ants up and down his arms and his whole body felt stiff. He couldn't even bend his arms to a ninety-degree angle. Needless to say, he was pretty irritable.

"Hey! Where are you people!" Ken yelled a the top of his lungs out the open door, and was startled to see Omi come crashing down with a painful gasp in front of him.

"Crap. Omi, I am so sorry. I didn't know you were right there," said Ken as he rushed forward, a sheepish smile on his lips and a worried look in his eyes. "You alright?"

"Fine. Are you…?"

"Wonderful, other then the fact that I feel like I'm wearing a medieval suit of armor. Did Yohji do the bandages? That freaking idiot."

"No. Yohji didn't…" Omi tried to stand up mid-sentence and would have collapsed back onto the floor if Ken hadn't lunged forward and caught him.

"Jeez, Omi, how bad are you hurt? You shouldn't be walking around."

"I'm fine, Ken," said Omi pulling away and heading back the way he had came. "Come on…you…need to come."

Ken stood there and just watched Omi, they way he listed to one side as he walked and how his shoulder, the one that wasn't bandaged tight, rose a fell from heavy breathing. He looked like he was running on empty and having a painful job of it, but he also looked determined to do whatever it was he was doing. It was better to go along with a determined Omi rather than to fight him, especially injured.

Ken followed Omi past both Yohji's and Omi's own room only to halt in front of Aya's. Omi had a look in his eyes, on his face, as he stared into the room that seemed as if he was ready to start crying.

When Omi started walking again Ken quickly followed, only to jerk to a standstill when he glimpsed what was in the room.

_Holy fucking shit._

His mind couldn't take in what he was seeing at first, so he stared registering unimportant details.

The dark curtains that couldn't seem to decide between purple and blue hung slightly open on the far wall. They let in a thin sliver of sunshine that illuminated the immaculately cleaned room. A small dark-wood dresser rested to the left of the window, its table top nearly empty. The onething that occupied it was a dirty, blood covered, three and a half-long piece of sharp metal. Aya's katana.

Aya's katana that was covered in blood. The katana that he cleaned almost religiously after every assassination lay bloody and abandoned. Ken would never have expected Aya's katana to be this misused unless Aya was dead.

Unconscious was probably a better alternative though. Much better, although seeing Aya collapsed in a heap on top of blood soaked sheets was a cold comfort.

"He needs to see a doctor, and now."

"Ken? What, are…?" Yohji's voice faded into a look of pain narrowed eyes.

He looked exhausted and had a bulge underneath the bandages wrapped around his head. From what Ken could see of Yohji's wounds all the blood on his clothes wasn't from him. Some of it must have been from Aya and the bloody mound of clothes that lay on the floor.

"Are you crazy? He hates doctors, when he wakes up he'll kill us," Yohji finished.

"You are sodefinitely not thinking straight. Just look at him! He needs a doctor before he bleeds to death, or gets an infection. Omi's to out of it to be able to do anything to help!"

"Stop yelling!" Yohji's eyes seemed to flinch tighter shut at his own voice.

"I'm not! You're going to bed, right now, and them I calling a Kritiker doctor, okay? No, don't argue with me, for all we know youprobably have a concussion. Omi we'll have the doctor take a look at your shoulder too when he gets here."

"Sure, Ken. Sorry that I can't help, I'm really sorry," Omi whispered softly.

"It's fine," said Ken brusquely. "Now go to bed, you too Yohji. I'll watch Aya."

"No, I'll stay. I don't think could get back to my room right now anyway."

"Fine." So, they were getting a doctor helpAya and even if both Yohji and Omi didn't seem quite like themselves yet, they weren't seriously hurt. If they got a doctor to see Aya, patch him up and give him some antibiotics for infection, Ken knew everything would be alright.

He just couldn't understand why he suddenly had a bad feeling.

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I had to hurry at the end, so it's a little choppy, but I thought you'd want the chapter anyway. The next chapter will begin the acton, and the main plot. 


	4. Doctors

Have fun.  


* * *

  


By the time the doctor from Kritiker arrived both Omi and Yohji had decided to rejoin the land of the sensible. Yohji had fallen asleep, head tilted back, mouth hanging open, assembled in a boneless heap in the chair next to Aya's bed. His light snoring masked Aya's raspy breathing and somehow made him look almost cute. Especially since he kept sliding down the chair, his shirt hiking up in the back and his sunglasses, which no one had seen him put on, hanging haphazardly from one ear.

Omi, after a nap of exactly 15 minutes, had gotten up and felt much better. Ken had helped him slip his arm into a sling after looking over it and deciding it wasn't as bad as they had thought. While it had gone into his shoulder the bullet ended up missing anything vital, like ligament and bone. It would mostly just leave his arm immobile for a while, something Omi wasn't particularly happy about.

Watching Omi try to make breakfast one-handed was a lot of fun though. Ken stood in the doorway at the bottom of the stairs, dressed in a pair of dull navy blue sweat pants and an overlarge T-shirt that said "KICKS" in bold black letters over a blue and silver soccer ball. He didn't look like he had any fashion sense but he hadn't really been trying. The shirt had soccer on it, and anything that had to do with soccer was equal in value to the Pink Panther diamond as far as Ken was concerned. I took him a second to realize Omi had been trying to talk to him.

"What was that?"

"Help me with this Ken. We need to eat and make sure Yohji eats too. Then I need to write a report to Kritiker so they know what's happened. And then I have this stupid report for school on a stupid expository subject that any preschooler should know and I want some ice cream!"

"Whoa! Calm down. We have some ice cream in the freezer, I bought some yesterday, and I know it's not the kind you like but it is still pretty good. As for the report if it's that easy it shouldn't take you that long to write and-"

"That's not the point!"

Omi stopped talking, hand clenched on the handle of the spoon he had just pulled out of the drawer. Fine trembles that ran through his arm made the spoon clank lightly against the counter.

"Omi..." Ken trailed off, unsure of what to say. He didn't even know what was wrong. Omi rarely reacted like this. The last time Ken had seen him go this out of control was when Yohji had gotten shot pushing the little blonde assassin out of the line of fire. It had taken them two days to figure out Omi avoided them and flinched whenever they came in contact because he was feeling guilty over Yohji getting hurt because of him. They, Aya not included even though he had been the one to point out Omi's reasoning to them, had spent an entire afternoon convincing Omi that it was most definitely _not_ his fault.

"He's so badly hurt Ken. And he got hurt protecting us. I-I…it's all my fault."

Ken blinked, not quite sure how 'he got hurt protecting us' translated to 'it's all my fault' but Omi always took things a little too personally. And concerning the idea the Aya had been protecting them Ken was a little doubtful. He'd probably wake up pissed at them for ruining the mission and forcing him to drag them home. Ken bet Aya wouldn't even consider the fact that they had actually gotten the target while he was devising the best way to kill them.

"It is not your fault Omi. It is most definitely not your fault. We all screwed up. Anyway, Aya will be fine, he's far to much of a stubborn bastard to die so easily." Please let that be true, even if he was a bastard he was still a teammate, still family. Ken snorted, okay, maybe not family.

"But Ken…" Omi's voice was hesitant and uncertain. Which was better than utterly convinced it was his fault.

"No buts, Omi. Aya's gonna be fine alright? We all are." He was sure if he said it enough times he could convince himself, too.

"'Going to'."

"What?"

"It's 'going to' not 'gonna'. Learn some grammar."

Ken tried to be annoyed, but ended up smiling.

* * *

  


Mental Note: Never _ever_ fall asleep in Aya's chair. Yohji felt as if someone had decided to imbed random blunt objects inside his skin and, after figuring that torture wasn't enough, had tied his spine in a mess of little knots.

"So you're finally awake, huh, Yohji?"

Yohji gave a disgruntled grunt and peeled his eyes open. At least he wasn't cringing from the light like the last time he woke up. His head also hurt a whole lot less, something he was very grateful for. And even as he let out a protesting moan at moving his aching body it was a lot less painful then walking around the hallway had been earlier.

Ken stood in front of him, a ridiculously large shirt hanging off his shoulders. Didn't the guy know that he would never get a girl that way? He looked like some ignorant jock that was married to the game of soccer. Now that wasn't far off the mark, not that it was a bad thing, more girls for Yohji is all.

"You looked so comfy sleeping there. Like the chair?"

"Hell no. This feels worse than a hangover!" Yohji voice suddenly got serious. "How's Aya?"

"The doctor's here," Ken said, gesturing behind him at someone Yohji couldn't see. "Once Aya gets checked over Omi's gonna get checked and then so are you."

"I'm fine," Yohji said. He got up, gently pushing Ken away so that he could see Aya.

A woman was leaning over the bed so that her lower-back length strawberry blonde hair brushed against the bed. She wore a womanized version of a tuxedo done in black and a pale violet. Chocolate brown eyes focused on stitching Aya up with each methodical movement that reached all the way up to her shoulders. One hot chick with a sharp needle up for grabs. She had 'single' written all over her.

"Listen please. He has multiple lacerations and a small stab wound in his side. The lacerations are minimal but the stab wound was starting to get infected so I gave him some antibiotics. His fever should break in a few days, and then he'll need a few more days bed rest…"

Yohji snorted.

"…before he's healthy again." Reaching into her bag Miss. Hot-Doctor pulled out a rather ordinary syringe. Holding it in one hand she reached down for Aya's wrist.

"What are you doing?"

The doctor froze and Yohji looked over to stare. Omi's voice was cold and suspicious. He stood tense in front of the window, a frown on his face.

"Giving him some pain medication."

"You don't give that much pain medication to someone who has lost that much blood. And Kritiker doesn't have any women you're age on staff as doctors here in Japan. There's no way I'll believe your 'I'm new' thing from earlier. Who are you?"

The dark look that shown in the doctor's eyes a second before she struck was the only reason Aya didn't die. Yohji jumped forward, grabbing the woman and jerking her away just before the syringe would have pierced Aya's skin.

The woman shifted the aim of the syringe so that it was heading for Yohji's arm. Suddenly Ken was there, pulling the hissing woman off Yohji and throwing her to the floor. She sprang back to her feet and shouted a yell as she jumped at Ken.

Yohji felt helpless to help Ken until he realized that he still had his watch around his wrist. He hadn't taken it off since the last mission.

Filching a blanket off of Aya's bed to wrap around his hands so they wouldn't get too cut up, Yohji pulled out his weapon. Tossing it up and over the woman's head he caught her around her waist and yanked tight. She collapsed backwards at his attack, folding neatly in half. She landed in a confused heap on the floor.

"Who are you working for?" demanded Omi from where his stood by Aya's bed, protecting their unconscious leader. "How did you find us?"

"You won't get away with what you did," the woman spat. "He'll find you and he'll kill you and there is nothing you can do to stop him." She suddenly stilled, going completely limp.

"You can't play dead, bitch. Who's-"

"Yohji," Ken said sharply. Looking down Yohji saw Ken motion towards the would-be assassin's thigh. There, sticking solidly out of the muscle, was an empty syringe.

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"Ken. Yohji. Get some supplies we need to leave, now. If she came at a call to Kritiker then Kritiker's compromised. We need to leave before whomever she worked for shows up on our doorstep. She stitched Aya up alright and the antibiotics were real so he should be okay, but we need to get moving."

"Where are we going?" asked Ken.

"We'll start at Villa Weiss. We can try to contact Manx from there and find out what's going on. We really need to get out of here now though."

Yohji only listened to this with half an ear, staring down at the dead woman. It wasn't a good feeling, watching a woman die. It wasn't a good feeling to have killed one. Though it was his job, and having his teammates attacked added extra incentive. But she had been one hot bod.

"I wonder," mumbled Yohji softly under his breath. "Was she attacking all of us or just Aya? And why."  
  
  


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Okay, that was a very introductory introduction to the plot. I hope it's peaked your interest. Please review and return.   



	5. Drinks to Memories

The house sat on a steep cliff. Dark emerald vines hung down from the roof, clinging stubbornly to the old, solid gray-stone of the walls. Crab grass grew in patches cross the barren yard and a twisted rose bush in a full bloom of blood-red color swayed lonely by the gated doors. A rough, scarred Willow tree hung its branches over an empty doghouse. A broken chain snaked fromthe pitch-black dark inside. A wooden sign thrust out of the ground at an angle at the end of the gravel path from the doors.

On the sign, embossed in bold black letters read, "Beware of Dog," except that "Dog" was crossed out and beneath it, with deep, burnt scratches into the wood, was written "Schuldich".

BEWARE OF SCHULDICH

* * *

And Schwartz enters the scene. Enjoy.

* * *

The club was packed, but not in the there're-too-many-people-to-breath sort of way. The live band that played on stage was very popular with the college crowd, but no one seemed to be actively trying to get drunk, more interested in dancing. Bodies swayed and twisted and turned on the floor, skin glowing with a light sheen of sweat in the dim light. The deep beat of the drummer reverberated through the air and the acoustics of the room dampened the echo into clean, pure music.

Schuldich paused with his whiskey half way between his mouth and the table, and cocked his head to the side. The music had been muffled, situated as he was in a dark corner at one of the square tables, but suddenly he couldn't hear it any more. The sound of people talking, a woman's deep purring laugh from the direction of the bar, the high giggles of a group of girls barely old enough to get through the door, all blended together, faded and then completely disappeared.

Something felt off, wrong, like some unidentifiable bad thing was going to happen.

And that made him sound so much like Crawford he was sorely tempted to gag. It was Bradley's job to tell the future and Schuldich certainly didn't want anything to do with that. Hearing people in the present was bad enough. Having to hear everything that they _could_ say, rather than what they were saying, was definitely a number of uncountable times the trouble. No wonder Brad got headaches. Not that he felt sorry for Crawford. That anal retentive pain in the- ("Damnit Schu. No swearing!" "Nagi! I can swear if I want to! And you just said 'damnit' damnit!" "No swearing!" "Are you even listening to me?") -deserved a few headaches every now and again. He always had to be such a prissy stuck-up about his stupid fu- ("Schuldich!").

Get out of my head Nagi!

"Why would I want to be in your head?"

Schuldich blinked. Looking up he saw Nagi, huddled in the chair across from him, back to the wall, wincing every time the singer on stage hit a particularly high note. A puzzled, slightly disgusted expression dominated his features. Schuldich hadn't realized he had spoken out loud, but decided to go with it.

"I can very well fucking swear if I fucking want to!" he snapped.

Nagi's face blanked and he stood up slowly from the chair in the corner. He watched Schuldich with a cautious look in his eyes as he reached forward and pulled the half-filled glass out of his hand.

The kid looked like he expected someone to bite him, Schuldich thought as he watched with vague curiosity.

Nagi set the glass down on the corner of the table, out of Schuldich's reach. Keeping his eyes locked intensely on Schuldich's he spokein what was obviously a forced calm.

"Okay. We're going home now. C'mon Schuldich. You're drunk."

He was not drunk. So what if he was slurring his s's and his l's and his n's and his r's and his…

Come to think of it everything did seem a little fuzzy around the edges.

"Just let me finish the damn drink Nagi." Schuldich said somewhat sulkily. And no, he didn't sulk. It wasn't his fault if some people couldn't tell the difference between sulking and not sulking. He did not sulk.

"We've been here for three hours and you've had five drinks. Let's just go home, alright?" said Nagi.

"Four and a half if you count the fact that I haven't gotten to finish this one," retorted Schuldich in what he would never admit was a show of mathematical brilliance, especially drunk.

"Schu…"

"I'll take him off your hands if you'd like to finish your whiskey," purred a deep and obviously female voice off the Schuldich's right. "I'm sure he'd be fun and you look like you could use the quiet. Win-win."

Anger bordering on rage burned through Schuldich as he watched Nagi cringe under that voice, giving no outward sign of it's effects other than the frozen passiveness of a puppy expecting to be kicked.

Nagi's mind uttered a faint, helpless 'go away' before Schuldich heard nothing. Nagi had realized he was broadcasting and then blocked it, but Schuldich had still heard.

"Get lost, bitch," growled Schuldich. Surging up out of his seat he steadied himself on the edge of the table for a second, then reached over and plucked Nagi out of his chair. Hand on his arm, he stared pushing the far to passive Nagi towards the door.

"Oh, come now. I'm sure you wouldn't mind sharing. You're hot; you could have your choice of toys to play with. I'd just be borrowing him, or we could take him together if you'd rather," the bitch continued in a sickly sweet voice.

What the hell was someone like this doing here? Schuldich had came to this bar in particular _because_ there would be no sexual predators around to frighten Nagi. The _Star Show_ wasn't the classiest bar in town but it had a reputation of being a place of good, clean fun and people looking for one-night stands were frowned upon. This bitch shouldn't even be here and Schuldich wasgonna bedamned if he was going to let her run them out, except for the fact that he could feel Nagi shaking under his hand.

As he pushed the door open and stepped out into the cold with Nagi in front of him Schuldich could still feel the woman's mind, bright with determination, following behind him.

"I swear if that woman comes up and talks at me again I'm gonna shred her mind into little pieces and then stuff her body into the sewer to rot," he mutter viciously under his breath.

"Schuldich, you can't use you powers. After what happened yesterday Crawford said-"

"Screw Crawford. He has a pole up his ass so long that it comes out the top of his head and would be the perfect way for Farf to climb to heaven and slice up God."

"You're being creative. You're…We're going home now."

"Neither of you are going anywhere."

Schuldich spun around, pushing Nagi behind him instinctively as he stared at the sight of the woman from before, settled comfortable in a shooting stance, aiming a loaded handgun at them steadily with both hands.

Schuldich cursed himself in both German and Japanese as he studied the little black dress she wore. It covered her just enough to hide a gun while still leaving the impression that she had nothing to hide. And that she wanted you to take the dress off just so she could prove it.

Schuldich was pulled out of his thoughts by the feel of Nagi pushing his power against the woman. He could feel the effort going into it and it should have blown everything in its path _through_ acouple of walls.

Leaves and dust stirred around the woman's feet. A damp newspaper a few feet behind the woman lifted up and slammed into the wall with a wet smack.

The woman stood unaffected, a smirk growing on her lips.

Schuldich gathered his will, pushing the beating pulse of pain behind his right eye out of his mind, reached out towards the woman, and twisted. He felt her mind scream under the pain as he riffled through her memories. The most recent were of planning to kill them. Some of what they looked like sitting together at the table, the way in which she planned to get them out of the building, she was a bitch just for that.

Schuldich kept looking, unconscious of the fact that Nagi had caught him as he slumped toward the ground. Or that the woman was getting her dress wet as she withered and twitched on the ground in pain, mouth open in a silent scream.

There. There it was…just…_light streamed trough the one unbroken window of the abandoned warehouse illuminating the three women and one man that stood at attention. They were all gazing towards the back of the warehouse looking intently for movement that wasn't there._

"_You want us to take out Schwartz? The telekinetic and the telepath in particular? How do you expect us to do that?" said the man._

"_One of your members has the ability to null the powers of a telekinetic, without his powers, killing him will be easily done," boomed a voice from the shadows where the four watched._

"_The telekinetic never leaves their headquarters alone, killing him in the presence of the others won't be easily done."_

"_He is most often seen with the telepath. It will be the perfect chance to kill them both."_

"_And the telepath? None of us have the power to thwart him."_

"_His powers will be taken care of before you strike."_

_The man then abruptly bowed low, and said a firm, 'we accept' before all four turned and walked out of the warehouse._

Schuldich came to himself laying curmpledhalf on the ground and half in Nagi's arms. A small hand was pulling the tangled vermilion hair back from his face and checking his eyes. The headache was back and his whole body felt like someone had poured burning oil all over it. His eyesight kept slipping in and out-mostly out-of focus and the ringing sounded like a siren in his ears.

The woman was spread on the ground, body contorted in pain, dead.

"Now can we go home?" Nagi whispered softly to Schuldich.

"Yeah. Yeah, let's go home."

Crawford needed to know that they had problems.

* * *

This actually does connect with the rest of the story. And, no, I won't tell you how. If you want to review and tell me how you think it connects that would be really cool. It would also tell me if I wrote this chapter, with all it's foreshadowing and what-not, correctly.

Please review and return.


	6. The Shiro Kaze

This is my late Christmas/Kwanza/Hanukah/Winter Break/I-can't-believe-I-haven't-update-in-so-long present to you. It's longer then I usually write.

Happy new year!

* * *

Crawford sat at his desk, phone held up to his ear, and frowned at what the man on the other end of the line was saying. The once steaming mug of coffee sat abandoned on his desk. His normal pristine white cup had been shattered in one of Farfarello's not quite laughable attempts at cooking, along with almost every other cup in the house. In its place Crawford was now stuck with Schuldich's gag gift. A bright pink mug with the etchings of a rabbit on one side and a decorate purple egg on the opposite. 

Crawford had come to dread this side of the telepath's humor. He could deal with him when he was being sarcastic or trying his vulgar hand at teasing, but sometimes he had the humor of a small child. A small _female_ child that was a little to obsessed with the neon colors, cute things and giving them to other people. The last time he had gone on a shopping spree had been particularly bad. Farfarello had gotten a neon yellow stuffed animal snake, Nagi a neon green parrot and he himself had gotten a pink panther. He always gave pink to Crawford.

But this particular gift had been given with a piece of something definitely _not_ of a child—though it was childish. To complement the gift the Neanderthal had stuffed a hastily scribed note that stated simply, 'You need to get laid' inside. Crawford supposed he should be thankful that the lazy fool had written it in sloppy, cursive German—a language that only he and Schuldich spoke with fluency—when Nagi had been the one to find it that morning and, thinking it was something odd of Farfarello's, had tried reading the thing in an attempt to find out what it meant.

Shaking himself out of the thoughts, and the memory of Schuldich's panicked face upon finding Nagi flipping patiently through a German-Japanese dictionary, Crawford focused back on the present. Reaching up he elegantly pushed his glasses further up on his nose. Light reflected off the glasses, blinding him from the room for a second. The gravely, serious voice on the other end of the line suddenly became inane babble.

Schuldich listed to the side into Nagi, forcing the obviously worried kid a little more towards the edge of the sidewalk, and a little more. A car was driving up behind them unnoticed. The eyes of the diver were cold and determined.

He came to himself tense in his chair, his grip making the plastic of the phone creek. The lights in the room seemed over bright and the door opposite him was blurry, but other than that there was nothing to indicate the usual effects of a vision. This one had been surprisingly clear, in chronological order and of only one event rather than the usual smattering of moments.

"Thank you for this information," Crawford said quietly into the phone, filling the silence left by the man. He remembered what had been said while he was in his vision with a detached noninvolvement, as if someone had recorded it to be played back to him.

He set the phone down in a 'click'. He sat, waiting for the door to come into focus, knowing that he'd only make it worse if he moved around to soon. This wasn't bad in comparison to his other visions but it could still have negative effects.

When the door stopped wavering in its frame Crawford stood up slowly from his chair and went to find Farfarello.

He found him sitting quietly on the couch, tossing a red bouncy ball from hand to hand. He watched it with eyes that were utterly fascinated and indifferent to everything else.

"Farfarello," said Crawford.

Farfarello looked up from his game and studied Crawford.

"You need to go pick up Nagi and Schuldich. They're in the Akita district. Kill the woman," commanded Crawford.

Farfarello got up, unquestioning, and walked out the door, as intent on his new task as he had been on the bright red ball, that now lay forgotten on the ash-wood floor.

Crawford reached down to pick it up. His fingertips brushed the rubbery surface and he was gone.

Red hair splayed on a leather seat. The car sped along the road. Balinese gripped the wheel with white-knuckled hands. Bombay holding someone still in the back seat. Siberian trying to reach someone with a cell phone. Abyssinian's shallow breathing. Violet eyes opening for a second.

Crawford spent a second, slumped against the couch, trying to relearn how to breath. Pain beat a tattoo in his temples. Blackness ate into his vision until the room and the bright red ball on the floor faded to black.

* * *

"I can't reach Manx." 

Omi blinked at the almost panicked tone in Ken's voice, and stared at the back of the brunet's head from the back seat. His hands absently shifted to keep Aya secure and safe as he lay very much out of it on the back seat. There wasn't really enough room to lay down so Aya's feet were pressed up against the far door, he knees bent to the side. His head was propped up on Omi's leg.

"Have you tried Birman?" asked Yohji from the driver's seat.

"She's still supposed to be on vacation. It's why we've gotten our missions from Manx for the last month, remember?" The sarcasm in Ken's voice was almost non-existent, but not quite.

"Of course I remember. You don't have to fucking yell at me!" snapped Yohji.

Everyone was on edge. Well, except for Aya, but he wasn't conscious enough for much of anything; which was why everyone was on edge to begin with. Having their leader's head resting weakly in his lap, lolling slightly with the car's movement, unnerved Omi.

"Stop it, both of you, please," pleaded Omi.

"Sorry, sorry," mumbled Yohji, almost before Omi had finished his sentence. "I just haven't had any coffee yet, okay? It's to early in the damn morning."

It was an obvious attempt to shrug the tension off, but no one called him on it.

"Well the sooner we get to Villa Weiss the sooner you get your coffee. And I actually agree with you on the morning thing, but I don't know if we get to count this as early. We've been driving all night and haven't gone to sleep, wouldn't it be late?" said ken, drawing the last few words out with a heartfelt yawn.

"It's four o'clock in the morning. That's too late to be a 'late night', that ends somewhere between two and three, so it's early," said Yohji.

"No wonder you don't get out of bed until noon if you consider three o'clock late. Midnight is late, three is too much sugar and coffee."

"You don't last 'till three on sugar and coffee. You gotta have a night on the town and that great woman sitting by herself practically radiating-"

"The inability to think because it's too early in the morning."

"No, actually," Yohji said dryly. "You're just out to ruin all my fun, aren't you?"

"Ha! As if getting stuck with a hangover every morning is-"

"Quiet."

The raspy yet still commanding voice cut through the slowly relaxing atmosphere like a knife. Ken snapped to attention and the whole car twitched as Yohji jumped. Omi brought his eyes down to see Aya, his eyes open in thin violet slits, conscious though dazed.

"Aya? Are you okay?" asked Omi, even though he knew it was a stupid question. He just couldn't seem to help himself.

Omi watched as the redhead's eyes shifted up to focus on him, completely ignoring the question. Omi tried to catch his gaze but found the he couldn't. It took him a second to realize that he was examining his shoulder before his clearing eyes shifted to Ken. He took his time looking over Ken as critically as he had Omi.

He was worried about them? The man had been insensible over the last twelve hours or so and he was worried about _their_ health?

Realizing that Aya wouldn't be able to see Yohji—as his head was behind Yohji's seat—and not wanting to make too obvious what he was doing Omi said, "We're all okay. Just some scratches and bruises. You've been unconscious for the last twelve hours or so."

Even with the information Omi expected Aya to sit up and see for himself, or at least try to. The way Aya lay with almost limp relief would have driven Omi to panic only a few months before, when Aya still strove to keep his distance from them; but that had been slowly getting better since Aya-chan had left all of Kritiker's influence to go live as a college student in America and Aya had started showing a little dependence/acceptance on small things—but not enough for Aya to be this comfortable. He hadn't even protested being treated as an invalid.

The silence that filled the car after Omi's remark was broken by Yohji. They all knew that even if Aya was injured beyond being able to help them he was still their leader and deserved to know what was going on. So they were answering the unasked questions.

"We found you pretty hurt so we called in a doctor," said Yohji.

"Yeah, but there must have been a leak in Kritiker or something. The doctor turned out to be an assassin in disguise," finished ken.

Omi felt Aya stiffen under his hands. Whether it was from the mention of the ever-hated doctors or the thought of the would be assassin Omi wasn't sure.

"The bitch died before we could question her. Killed by her own weapon, disgustingly ironic." Yohji was irritated.

"Right now," said Omi, "we're headed towards Villa Weiss. We tried to contact Manx, but couldn't get through to her."

"No," said Aya.

"Um…no, what, Aya?" asked Yohji.

"Don't go to Villa Weiss." Aya lifted his head up off of Omi's leg, held it for a second, before collapsing weakly back, as if he could hold his head up. "If there is a leak in Kritiker then Villa Weiss is compromised."

"Then where the hell are we supposed to go?" responded Yohji. "We only have the supplies we packed and that's not a lot considering we were kinda rushing to get out of the Koneko. Oh, and before you even suggest it, we are not spending the night in my car. And we need to get you somewhere safe anyway."

Omi winced. Remind Aya he's to injured to help, why don't you? Great.

"There's a hotel on the north edge of the city called The Shiro Kaze. Tell the front desk you're checking in to Honda Sora's suit," said Aya.

"The hell. What's up with that Aya? Why are-"

"Yohji, he can't hear you. He's out again," said Omi.

"Well, what are we supposed to do now?" asked Ken. He was worried again, tapping his heal up and down on the car floor.

"Aya's right, we can't go to Villa Weiss. I should have realized it sooner. We could have walked right into a trap," said Omi. He would have gone and gotten them all killed. He should have been _thinking_, paying attention then maybe the mission wouldn't have gotten screwed up in the first place. Then Aya would be okay and they wouldn't be running for their lives in the dark hours of the morning.

"Stop thinking whatever you're thinking right now Omi," said Ken.

Omi looked up to find him twisted around in his seat watching Omi carefully.

"But-"

"No," interrupted Ken. "None of us thought about the Villa being found out. It's no more your fault then it is mine and Yohji's.

"It's going to be alright, okay? We'll go to the, what was it?…The Shiro Kaze. If Aya's says to go there then it should be okay. We can get a place to sleep and then figure out what to do next."

"Okay," whispered Omi. "I'm sorry," he added.

"Nothing to be sorry for Chibi," said Yohji.

Omi leaned back into the suddenly very comfortable seat and fell into an exhausted sleep.

* * *

Nagi watched as Schuldich slammed the door open. 

"I cannot believe this! Some bitch has to try to kill us and then another one tries to run us over! All in the same night! Crawford, if you saw this coming and didn't tell us for some stupid reason I am so gonna load all your laundry full of starch! See how you like that!"

It was rather surprising, but it seemed that the second near-death experience of the night had stuffed Schu full of energy. He had speed walked in a furious rampage all the way home, yelling obscenities in numerous languages at the top of his lungs. Nagi had walked behind him, using his power in quick burst whenever Schuldich had started to fall, still not being very steady. He was pretty sure Schu hadn't noticed.

"Crawford! Crawford, where are you? Crawford?"

Farfarello pushed past both of them, still angry over the woman getting away before he could kill her. He turned around the corner towards the living room and disappeared from view. His gruff voice reached them from around the corner.

"He's in here."

"Then why the hell didn't he answer me?" snapped Schuldich as he stormed after Farfie.

"He can't," said Farfarello.

Both Nagi and Schuldich sped up at that. There had already been two attempts on their lives tonight. What if someone had gone after Crawford?

"What do you mean he can't?" said Schuldich.

Nagi walked in to see Farfie kneeling next to the limp form of Crawford.

"Is he hurt?" asked Nagi.

"No," answered Schuldich.

"Bad vision?" suggested Farfie.

"Must have been a really bad one to knock him out like this. Either that or it was something else," said Schuldich.

"What else could it have been?" asked Nagi.

Schuldich opened his mouth as if to answer but stopped when Crawford suddenly came awake. He pushed himself up slowly off the ground, a hand reaching up to fix his glasses and rub at a temple. Schuldich reached forward cautiously to offer Crawford some help in staying upright.

"Crawford? What happened? Was it a vision?" asked Schuldich.

"Yes. Farfarello go gather the usual supplies. We need to leave." Order given Crawford closed his eyes and leaned back using the couch as a prop. A few wayward pain lines deepened around his eyes.

They had been moving a lot since betraying Esset so the 'usual supplies' meant everything they need to leave as well as getting rid of any evidence that they had been here.

"You think Esset has something to do with this?" inquired Nagi.

"No," said Crawford, as if that explained everything.

"I'll go help Farf then," said Nagi. As he walked out of the room towards where he could hear Farfarello rummaging around, he caught some of the conversation going on behind him.

"Where won't they be able to find us? Where are we gonna go?" asked Schuldich.

Crawford answered, "The Shiro Kaze."

* * *

Now why would Crawford and Aya be going to the same place? You'll have to read to find out. 

Arigato and Ja ne!

01/15/06 10:57


	7. Car Fight

The Shiro Kaze hotel was imposing. It was a dark, plain gray that no one would describe as dull. Imposing lion/dragon gargoyles guarded the gates and two hide-and-seek, nearly naked women framed the double doors. Thick, lush green grass covered the lawn, looking as if it hadn't been cut in centuries. It looked like the evil boss's estate in some old, supernatural cult flick.

The driveway into the estate split into two different roads. One curved around the side of the mansion and towards the back. The other went right up to the doors, a circular dive that enclosed a simple yet elegant fountain spewing crystal water. Engraved in almost cursive kanji, the words Shiro Kaze lay in stone.

Yohji parked the Sven in front of the doors and got out. Omi followed behind him, having woken up ten minutes prior. Ken stayed in the car with the still unconscious Aya. Yohji was starting to get worried about that; even with the worst injuries Aya was usually awake and snapping at them after a couple of hours.

"Hey, Yohji?" asked Omi.

"Yeah?"

Omi blinked his blue eyes up at the building. "How do you think Aya knows about this place?" Omi looked up at Yohji. "I mean, I know we don't know a whole lot about his past but this just…oh, I don't know."

"I know what ya mean, chibi," agreed Yohji. "Doesn't seem like Aya's style."

"Yes."

They both looked again at the evil-boss-hideout that was supposed to be a hotel. It didn't seem quite as imposing as before, but that might have just been the fact that the sun was coming up over the horizon. It cast long shadows over the wild grass and illuminated the almost ancient looking designs that covered the walls.

Scratch that, still looked pretty evil.

Yohji steeled himself against whatever they would find inside (he half expected some sacrificial ritual) and began forward. It took him a second to realize his were the only footsteps that echoed in the courtyard. He looked back to find Omi stock still watching the car.

"Come on, Omi," called Yohji. "They'll both be fine. We need to get a room."

Omi jerked his gaze up to Yohji before nodding and following after him.

The doors were stiff and hard to move and Yohji's head was starting to ache a little by the time he got them open. Inside was a huge empty room that looked like a medieval ballroom. The walls were covered in dark ceiling-to-floor tapestries. The floor was polished marble. Yohji was almost surprised to find modern electric lights in the room, though a number of those lights hung in a chandelier from the ceiling.

To the right of the doors was a small—in comparison to the room—front desk, behind which stood a man in his late thirties, maybe forties, wearing a dark pinstriped suit. His black auburn hair was combed back but a small lock fell onto his forehead to hang over his bored brown eyes. He looked not uncomfortable, but not happy with wearing the suit.

Omi made a beeline for the desk. Yohji followed at a slower pace, still trying to take in the entire room and failing miserably. Just half the room was bigger than the Koneko!

"Were here for a room," said Omi up ahead.

The man behind the counter just watched him silent.

Not about to look intimidated—being it was enough thank you—Yohji step up to the counter and said, "We were told to ask for…" Oh, crap! What was that name Aya had mentioned? Fonda? Ronda? Ronda…Sori? Sorna?

"Honda Sora's room," said Omi. Yohji cast a sheepish glance in his direction but Omi wasn't paying him any mind.

"Who sent you here?" inquired the desk clerk. He had a deep almost gravely baritone voice that so did not match the body.

"Um. Fujimiya," answered Omi. Yohji bet he wasn't sure whether Aya had used his sister's name or his real one here, and had decided to stick with the family name. Hopefully the guy would recognize the name.

And recognize it he did. His whole face lit up, his eyes brightened, a smile curved over his lips and in a surprised, happy voice much more human than the one he had used before he said, "Really?"

"Uh, yeah," said Yohji, slightly take aback by the man's reaction.

He was still smiling when he said, "Follow the driveway around back. The suit is up the stairs and to the left. The door will be unlocked with the keys on the coffee table. The owner isn't expected to be back for another couple of days so it's yours until then." He gave them another grin and then spun around. "Now if you'll excuse me I need to go do something. If you have any questions just pick up the phone and dial star zero one."

He slipped through a door behind the desk and disappeared. Yohji hadn't even seen a door there and was surprised that when the door closed again he could only barely see the outline of it in the wall. It looked just like the rest of the stone wall.

"Yohji, did he just disappear through a wall?"

"Yeah. Weird even for us, huh?"

"Does this mean we have a place to stay?"

"Looks like it. Also looks like that guy knew Aya."

Omi just hn'ed, doing a very good impression of Aya, and walked rather dazedly out the door, which still stood as open as Yohji had left it. Guess the wind couldn't budge it an inch.

When they open the car doors Ken didn't even move from his twisted position in the front seat where he watched Aya intently. The redhead still lay there oblivious but in a different position from when they had left.

"Ken?" said Omi.

"He woke up, just for a little bit. Moved around a bit, saw the house-thing and I think he mumbled 'good' before he was out again," said Ken. He looked up and turned forward in his seat. "So, we got a place to stay."

"Yup," said Yohji. "Seems Aya's pretty popular 'round here. He's even got an admirer."

Ken looked at him in confusion and Omi just frowned.

* * *

Crawford sat stiffly in the passenger seat of his car, trying to keep his head as still as possible. He still hadn't recovered from the vision, even having needed help getting out of the apartment and into the car. His headache flared to life whenever something jolted the car.

That 'something' was mainly Schuldich. Normally he would have never let Schuldich drive—he tended to get lost in other drivers heads and crash, or end up driving too fast—but Farfarello and Nagi couldn't drive and he was in no shape to. Surprisingly Schuldich seemed to be driving very carefully, even a little below the speed limit.

Actually, Schuldich had been subdued since the incident two days ago. Nagi had come running to Crawford, panicked, saying he had found Schuldich crumpled on the floor, trembling, and he couldn't get him to respond. When Crawford saw him he was still on the ground eye's squeezed shut, flinching away from Farfarello's touch. He was mumbling under his breath 'stop it, stop' over and over again.

"Schuldich? Can you hear me?" Crawford kept his voice low.

"Bradley?" It wasn't more than a whisper.

"Nagi, go get one of Farfarello's tranquilizers."

They had had to use two to get Schuldich unconscious, granted they weren't the strongest that they could have used, but one should have been enough to knock a small horse under. When Schuldich had woken up only two hours later his shields were nearly gone and using his powers turned him incoherent.

Crawford was beginning to think that it was all a lot more connected then he had thought it was. Schuldich's power, the two attacks on both Schuldich and Nagi, Crawford's own visions. Something had changed and whatever it was it was effecting his visions. It was almost as if…

Focused eyes. The car with four men inside, driving in front of her, slower than the rest. She pressed down hard on the gas.

"Drive faster," said Crawford the instant he came out of the vision.

"What?" said Schuldich.

"Drive faster," Crawford repeated, opening his eyes to see headlights approaching in the side mirror.

Crawford saw Schuldich's gaze rest on him for a second before it was back on the road. "Why?" he asked.

The whole car jerked with the impact. Nagi cried out in the back seat and Schuldich nearly went through the glass windshield. Farfarello calmly turned around to see the car behind them, the front fender bent and dented. Crawford knew the left rear light of their own car was shattered and dark.

"That's why," he said through gritted teeth as pain sparked like fireworks in his head.

* * *

Review and return.

01/29/06 6:56


	8. Far Too Hurt

Sorry I'm so late. Hope you enjoy.

* * *

It was dark and light at the same time. A muffling sheen of shadow overlaying the full glow of an elegant, Victorian lamp. The muted hum of electricity meandered through the whispered rhythm of breathing. The slight 'tick, tick, tick' of a face-clock's second hand was somewhere to the right.

Aya opened his eyes to a stone ceiling. Dry mortar ran between the cut stone as they crisscrossed across each other in slanted lines. The gray rock seemed far above him, as if the sky had decided to cast the illusion of stone walls.

He tensed his arms and slowly began pushing himself up, stifling a groan as the movement pulled at the wound in his side. The colors in the room paled and he felt the blood drain out of his face. He held himself still, not yet fully sitting, until his breathing got a little less shallow and the ache in his limbs lessened.

Pulling himself up he leaned against the headboard of the queen-sized bed he was on, only to nearly loose his balance and tumble back down when he caught sight of his clothes. The green fluorescence of the shirt contrasted sharply with the maroon of the bed sheets. It was one of Yohji's only button-up shirts, a kind he wasn't very fond of because it wasn't skintight. On Aya it hung like a child wearing his father's jacket, not really too long but definitely too big. Four buttons were closed from the waist up, allowing clean white bandages to peek over the top. The shirt was accompanied by a pair of Aya's own dark jeans. He wasn't wearing any socks.

A muffled snore made Aya turn his head to the right. On a second bed of the same color lay Ken. He was sprawled on top of the sheets his arm atop the chest of Yohji, who lay straight as a board, except for the arm that was flung out and up to curve around his head.

The chair next to the bed was empty and there were no blankets on the floor, making Aya wonder where Omi was. There were no other sounds of movement anywhere in the vicinity. The old wooden face-clock ticked against the wall but other than that and soft human breathing there was silence.

Aya tensed his body and the swung his legs off of the bed. It was a frustratingly slow and painful process as it pulled wounds and left his body with a fine tremble. The uncovered stone floor was icy cold on his bare feet, but the shock of it cleared his head. He pushed himself carefully to his feet.

The walk to the doorway out of the bedroom was slow, but he shoved the steady ache to the back of his mind and forced himself to continue. By the time he had reached the door his body was moving easier as the stiffness slowly worked itself out. His hand clenched the frame of the door as he rested for a second.

The doorway opened to a living room of sorts. A lush red rug covered the floor and the room was peppered with beige and violet armchairs. A flat screen TV adorned one wall and windows showing a grassy courtyard the other. Five doors, including the one he was standing in the doorway of, lead out of the room.

He pushed himself forward and walked towards where he thought the bathroom was, only half-remembering the layout from the last time he was here. It hadn't looked like anything had changed but Aya didn't entirely trust his perceptions at the moment. The world kept fading at random intervals and it bothered him.

He flicked the lights on inside the door and was rather relieved to see he had found the right place. The mirror showed tired eyes framed by limp red hair. He face was paler than usual and an almost blue tint was on his lips. He realized that he was cold. Shivering in fact, that was what the trembling had been earlier. He turned the water on hot and then placed his hand under the faucet. He splashed the water onto his face and then turned the water off. He stood, both hands on the edge of the counter, face down, bangs dripping cooling water into the sink.

"Aya?"

It was Omi's voice, but Aya didn't answer.

"Aya? Yohji where's Aya? Yohji wake up. Yohji, come on, wake up, where's Aya? Yohji!"

"Why in the hell aren't you waking Ken up?" Yohji's voice was groggy with sleep.

"Because he needs to rest and-'

"Well I need to rest, too. I drove us all the way here while you took a nap."

"Yes, but Ken didn't. Now hurry up and get up."

"Damnit Omi, that still means I got less sleep then Ken."

"Not when ken stayed up with me to move all of the stuff into the building while you got your beauty sleep. I mean it Yohji, get up."

"Alright, alright. I'm up. You win. Hey, where's Aya?"

"That's why I was trying to get you up! I know you didn't have anything to drink last night so you must just be that stupid."

"Why, chibi, that hurt. I don't think I'll ever get over it."

"Sorry. Now, let's go find Aya."

"'K. And you know I was being sarcastic right?"

"Yes, Yohji, I know you were being sarcastic."

"Good, 'cause…"

Aya let the voices go and pushed himself upright. He did it too fast, causing black to quickly fan across his vision. When he could no longer see anything his knees went weak and buckled. It was almost a controlled fall as he cleanly sunk to the floor. Only he didn't control it.

"Whoa there Aya. I've got ya. You probably shouldn't be walking around just yet," said Yohji as he wrapped strong gentle arms around a dazed Aya.

"Is he okay?" Omi asked.

"Seems like it," replied Yohji. "You wanna go grab a blanket from the bedroom? Aya's cold as ice, I swear."

"Sure."

Aya's vision was clearing slowly when Yohji pulled him to his feet. His whole body still felt weak so Yohji supported him as they walked slowly towards the chairs. Aya would have chafed at his own weakness if he had the energy, but he only had enough to stay upright and keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Omi and Ken both walked out of the bedroom. Omi carrying a blanket and Ken just looking sleepy and rubbing his eyes. Omi handed the blanket over to Yohji then picked one of the chairs to perch on. Ken sprawled out in his own.

Aya felt Yohji wrap the blanket around him and then push him lightly into a seat. He didn't fight him, as tired as he was, and concentrated on holding the blanket around his shoulders. Aya looked up to see Yohji stretch out in another chair so that all the rest of Weiss sat facing Aya. He leaned back in the chair, drawing the blanket tighter, and steeled himself for the up coming conversation.

"So, Aya, you wanna tell us why we're in this freaky mansion?"

* * *

The next hit by the woman forced Schuldich to veer off the road. 

They smashed through the guardrail and began careening down the hill, hitting every bump on the way. Schuldich felt his lower jaw snap up to the roof of his mouth but didn't have time to wince at the bitten and bleeding tongue before they were hit again.

That chick had to be absolutely crazy. She was chasing them down hill in a flimsy car in the middle of the night. She was chasing them with a _car._ She was trying to _kill_ them with a _car._ Has the world of assassinations sunk so low? Schuldich was vaguely aware that he had bigger problems that he should be worrying about but, come on, seriously? A _car?_

Nagi's yelp of pain brought Schuldich back to the present with a particularly vicious jerk. Or that could have been that the car had slammed into them again. He could just barely hear the sharp scream of the metal and the crinkle of shattered glass.

Schuldich started to concentrate, focusing his will on the mind behind them. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel and he unconsciously moved away from the woman's next hit. He could feel the mind slowly coming into focus like a fuzzy picture though a camera over the pain in his skull. Almost…

"No! Who do you think is driving this car Schuldich? Stop this instant."

Schuldich immediately responded to the low voiced command. He snapped back into his own mind at rigid attention. _No one_ disobeyed Crawford when he used that tone of voice. Schuldich had done some of the most distasteful things in his life on orders from that voice and he would still do them. That voice had gotten people put under isolation and torture for years, and did not tolerate resistance.

That voice had also saved his ass more times then he could count.

A huge, grayish, malicious looking rock flung the car up and into the air. The whole word inverted as the car flipped. Schuldich only had time for a vain "Oh, shit" before the car hit down with a jarring thud on the passenger side, rolled once again to land miraculously on its wheels.

The car behind them hit the same rock and Schuldich would have yelled 'yes!' and praised the same rock he had been cursing the second before, except for the fact that he couldn't seem to get his brain working much less his mouth. The car didn't flip, but landed nose down onto the ground with a satisfying crunch as the entire engine crumpled into the space of two feet. The back wheels landed down and bounced off the ground before becoming still. There was no movement in the driver seat.

There was no movement from the passenger seat of their car either. Nagi was mumbling and moaning holding what was probably a broken wrist, while Farfarello barreled trough the side window (the doors were all broken on lock) and practically skipped with glee over to the other crashed car. Schuldich supposed the whole skipping thing was his mind on panic mode, since he would never imagine _Farfie_ skipping. _Skipping_ Farfie, ohhh man.

The source of his panic lay still, limp and utterly unaware of the upset his frozen form was stirring up. His glasses lay shattered on the ground where they had flown out the broken window. Sharp, shallow cuts covered his face, one cut down over a closed eye, half a thin slice above, half below.

Schuldich's hand shook as he reached towards his unconscious leader. Crawford lay slumped against the door, his shoulders folded in and his head hanging down. Schuldich fingers felt for the pulse in his neck and for one terrible moment he felt nothing. Crawford was dead.

Then the faint pulse of blood traveled under his fingers. It was weak and slow, but there.

"Schuldich," said a hoarse Nagi. "Is Crawford?"

"He's not dead." Schuldich couldn't keep the relief, or worry, out of his voice. He didn't even really try.

"Neither is the woman," said Farfarello. He was walking back to the car the limp form of the chick slung over his shoulder, head flopping with Farfarello gait.

"Then kill 'er," Schuldich snapped. The woman was as good as dead for hurting them.

"We need her alive for information," stated Nagi matter-of-factly. "We should probably head for that inn Crawford was talking about. We can interrogated her when she wakes up."

"Fine. Farf, get in the car. You can dump the bitch in the trunk, I don't want her stinking up the car," Schuldich lied. It didn't have anything to do with the small, though she did smell of sickly sweet perfume, he just didn't want her near them. With Crawford down for the count they had no insight into the future, so he wasn't going to take any chances.

As Farfarello opened the trunk and locked the woman in Schuldich reached over and carefully rearranged Crawford, checking for other wounds as he went. He was bleeding from a large cut on the back of his head. Gushing was more like it, but Schuldich had learned from personal experience that head cuts were never as bad as they looked. Head wounds were another problem but Schuldich didn't have time to check for a concussion. He wrapped the cuts with the bandages they had stored in the front seat compartment.

Farfie got back in through the window and Schuldich started the car. It caught, died, caught again and then held. Schuldich drove carefully off of the hill and onto the highway.

The sunrise was beginning to light the sky.

* * *

I know I made Aya sound very...un-Aya, but that was the idea. He'll get better. Or I'll get him hurt again. Or maybe I should do both?

Anyway, Review and Return.

03/04/06 5:54


	9. Them and Us

I was, um, in Japan and the computers hated me. So I'm sorry for being so late. I will start to regularly update from now on.

* * *

"Aya, are you okay?" asked Yohji.

Aya blinked over at him. He didn't seem very focused at all, his eyes narrowed in an obvious effort to think through the pain. He sat huddled in the chair, the blanket that Yohji had given him earlier pulled tightly around his shoulders. Pale fingertips were visible clutching the blanket in a weak grip.

"What did you say?" he asked in a quiet and subdued voice. Yohji watched worriedly as he pulled both of his feet up and off the floor and folded them under him, tucking the blanket in completely. It wasn't a defensible position. Yohji had thought before that Aya had felt cold but maybe he hadn't realized just _how_ cold.

"I said 'are you okay?'" Yohji kept his own voice low. The atmospheres felt quiet, like being in a library.

"Before that," replied Aya in a stronger voice. No louder, but firmer, more commanding. Almost the voice he had during missions.

"He asked about why we're here," commented Ken. There was an almost mocking quality to his voice. "Weren't you paying attention?"

The inactivity was obviously getting to Ken. He sat in his chair fidgeting, tapping his heel on the floor, his eyes flicking from person to person.

When his eyes settled on Yohji he said, "That's what you said, right?"

Yohji frowned at him, "No. I said, why are we here in this freaky mansion?"

"But-" Ken started and was cut off by Omi.

"You said, 'So, Aya, you wanna tell us why we're in this freaky mansion?' Now can you both concentrate? We need to figure out what to do next." Omi had his own mission voice that he now used unmercifully. Yohji suddenly felt a little guilty.

"Sorry," said Yohji. He was echoed by Ken, who had shrunk down into his seat and finally found a comfortable position.

"Aya?" questioned Omi.

"Kritiker is unaware of the Shiro Kaze," Aya answered the question that Yohji had forgotten for a minute. "Whomever is leaking information won't be able to tell there masters about this place."

"Won't they be able to find it some other way?"

"They had better not," grumbled a low voice from over in the doorway.

Yohji was up and pulling the wire out of his watch before he could think. Ken had placed himself in a fighting stance in front of Aya and Omi held in one hand a ballpoint pen that had been on the table and a glass paperweight in the other. Yohji was disgusted by how unprepared they were for an attack, he wouldn't even have his watch if he hadn't forgotten that he had been wearing it, instead of taking it off like he usually did after a mission.

Though he would never admit it out loud—and probably never to himself either—the man in the doorway made him nervous. He wasn't sure if it was the situation in general or the fact that he had been able to open the door and step in without any of them noticing.

"What?" the man said, giving them a puzzled expression.

It was that desk clerk from downstairs, except now he wore soft, unglossy, brown leather pants accented by a deep green long sleeve shirt. Embroidered on the shirt, where someone usually placed a breast pocket, was a small depiction of a snake entwined around an old-fashioned European oil lamp. The exact same picture that Yohji remembered seeing carved into the front doors.

"Please don't answer me all at once," he said. He nodded over at Aya. "Fujimiya."

"Murata," Aya greeted.

"Long time, no see," said Murata. "You want to tell your friends to relax? I'm not gonna do anything."

"Kudo, Hidaka, Tsukiono, put the weapons away and sit down."

Omi glanced questioningly at Aya, then put his impromptu weapons down and sat back quietly. Ken slowly followed suit. Yohji stayed standing, keeping his defensive stance, but he did let his wire curl back into the watch.

Murata studied Yohji with cool eyes for a second and then said, "Well, this might be interesting. You guys have particularly bad timing, I have to leave, there's been a bit of an upset and I have to go deal with it. The thing is, you're gonna be having some guests. There're headed up as we speak. The door off to the side in the kitchen leads to a second set of rooms, but you'll have to share the living room and the kitchen." He turned directly to Aya. "It's Crawford and his group. And while I know you've never met the guy, you at least know he's a friend of Sora's, so be nice."

Yohji watched as Aya stared at Murata for a couple of seconds before giving a slight, almost imperceptible nod.

"Good. Enjoy your stay. It's 27181." Yohji was still staring, trying to figure out the numbers, when the door shut softly behind the man.

"27181? What's up with that?" asked Ken. "And who _is_ that weirdo? Did you see? He was bare foot."

"Yeah that was a little odd," remarked Omi.

"The floor in the hallway is hardwood," Aya calmly informed them. "Shoes would have made noise."

"Can we get over the shoes!" Yohji snapped. He was suddenly frustrated, angry. He had no idea what was going on, why they were here, why someone had tried to kill them, _who_ was trying to kill them _and_ what had gone wrong with Kritiker. He knew nothing about what was happening and so was absolutely helpless to do anything about it. Absolutely helpless.

"Look, what the hell is going on!? We don't know what's happening, somebody's trying to kill us, we're all so off balance that we didn't even notice the guy coming through the door!" Yohji cut himself off, sucking in breath after breath of air, trying to get himself to calm down. Aya, Ken, and Omi were all watching him with the same look people wear when they se someone getting ready to jump off a building. It made Yohji nervous, which just made him yell louder. "And all you can talk about is some guy walking around barefoot!" he finished.

Yohji wasn't sure how he expected them to react, but he was never able to find out. At that exact moment the door to the hallway was flung open, slamming with an echoing bang against the wall.

* * *

Nagi wasn't quite sure what he expected when they were allowed into the hotel that Crawford had sent them to. The hulking mansion wasn't on the list of expected things, but as he could imagine Crawford living in such a place it wasn't too shocking. What was shocking was opening the door to their rooms to find two members of Weiss and their leader, who was curled up in a chair, staring rather blankly at the fourth. 

At the sight Nagi reacted instinctively, using his powers to pin Bombay to the floor. Balinese spun around almost to fast for Nagi to see and threw his deadly wire at him. Siberian lunged at Schuldich, who hadn't seemed to have figured out what was going on yet. Farfarello, carrying Crawford, seemed at a loss of what to do with their leader cradled in his arms.

Nagi was easily able to halt Balinese's attack, but Schuldich wasn't so lucky. Nagi watched, unable to do anything to help, as Schuldich was flung into the wall and Siberian turned to attack Farfarello.

Farfarello defended himself, not even bothering to pull out his knives as he blocked the attack. But the movement lost him his grip on Crawford and their leader dropped heavily to the ground.

"Crawford!" Nagi yelled, forgetting about his own struggle. He felt wire begin to slip over his head, intent on chocking him to death, or slicing his throat to shreds. There was nothing he could do to stop it from constricting, tightening until he couldn't breathe, couldn't get any air into his lungs…

And suddenly it was gone and he was left kneeling on the ground, coughing, trying to breathe through the pain.

Nagi looked up, expecting to see Farfie or Schu standing over him, only to see Abyssinian, the leader of Weiss, holding the dripping bloody wire of his teammate in his bare hands.

_Nagi?_

Nagi had the presence of mind to send back, _I have no idea_, to Schuldich, but beyond that he couldn't think. The cold, angry leader of Weiss had just saved his life. Was even now standing over him, protecting him—from his own teammates.

"What the hell are you doing?" snapped Balinese. He must have released the wire because it now hung loosely between the two.

"Aya?" questioned Siberian.

Nagi wasn't sure quite what he felt when Abyssinian ignored his two teammates in favor of turning around slightly to ask him a question. After hearing the question he wasn't sure if it, or the whole situation, shocked him more.

"Which one is Crawford?"

Nagi wordlessly picked up a shaking hand and pointed at his leader.

"Oracle?"

Nagi nodded mutely.

"Oh, hell no, Aya. We are not—there is no way—we can't!" shouted Balinese.

Abyssinian just turned to stare stonily at Balinese. His expression clearly stated that he would not tolerate argument. It made Nagi shiver and look down at his hands.

"But Aya they're…" Siberian trailed off. Small white slippers appeared in Nagi's line of vision as Bombay strode forward to plant himself in front of Abyssinian.

"He's the one that knows the person that you used to know, too, right?" asked Bombay in a neutral tone of voice.

"Yes," was the quiet reply.

"Then we can't kill them."

Nagi felt Schuldich's astonishment flare like a supernova inside his head.

* * *

The next chapert will be up really quickly, as I've already finished it.

10/23/06

8:08 PM


	10. Calm Before the Storm

Hehe...so I wasn't as fast as I'd thought I'd be. Oh well, hope you enjoy.

* * *

Omi stood quietly before his leader and watched a series of almost-hidden emotions chase themselves across the pale swordsman's face. His statement seemed to echo continuously in the silence of the room. '_We can't kill them'._ That was almost like saying that they would help them. Almost like saying that they would offer Schwartz their protection, since that was what they had come for anyway.

Omi didn't like it. He didn't like it at all. But he trusted Aya, had to trust him for the trust he had been shown in the past. Aya had told him that he wasn't a Taketori, wasn't evil like Reiji had been. Aya had trusted him, and he had vowed to himself that if there was ever a chance that he could return that trust, he would. Now was a chance, blind trust was required and Omi was willing to give it.

That didn't mean he was going to relax his guard though. He watched the members of Schwartz carefully. He dismissed Oracle, Crawford, as a threat as the man was obviously hurt and unconscious. Prodigy was still positioned behind Aya's back, which Omi didn't like, but couldn't do anything about. Prodigy didn't seem to be much of a threat either, with his glazed eyes and trembling figure. Omi thought it was possible that he was going into shock. Berserker sat Indian-style on the carpet, tossing a bright red ball back and forth, watching the scene with an interest akin to Ken's when he was forced to watch a cooking show. Mastermind on the other hand…

_It isn't nice to stare, _katzchen.

…was dangerous, dangerous, dangerous. He looked like even crazier then the last time Omi had seen him. His hair was flung about and tangled, but not in the 'sexy-wind-blown' look that Yohji usually attempted. His usual bandana was twisted on his head, the knot resting behind one ear. He was slumped gracelessly against the wall, his face matching the pale pasty color of the paint.

The silence that had overcome the room was broken when Aya took an unsteady step away from Prodigy and towards a chair.

"You don't honestly expect us to let them stay here," screeched Yohji, his voice an octave or two higher than normal.

"We told the guy who worked here we would," said Ken, saving Omi and Aya from answering.

"We didn't _tell_ the guy anything. Aya just nodded his head at 'im." Yohji nodded his own head as if to emphasize the fact. "And this is _Schwartz_ we are talking about."

"We haven't really been their enemies since Esset went down. We haven't even seen them," countered Ken.

"This from the guy who just jumped one of our 'not enemies.'"

"I thought they were attacking us!"

"Exactly! They could attack us at any time and you want them here when Aya can't defend himself!"

Omi didn't think that Yohji or Ken saw it, but Aya tensed where he was sitting and turned to glare at the back of Yohji's head.

"Guy's…" Omi quiet attempt at cutting the tension wasn't even acknowledged.

"Well what do you want us to do Yohji? Dump them out on the street so that whatever did _that_," he gestured wildly with his hand, "to them can get another shot off?"

"Why you naive…you just have to save everybody don't you Ken?" Yohji suddenly sounded both exasperated and exhausted. His whole body slumped and the hand with his weapon dropped.

Omi felt something inside him that he hadn't known was tense relax. Ken, he knew, would follow whatever Omi and Aya decided. He wouldn't argue with them after the decision was made, and he would do what needed to be done. Yohji, on the other hand, would have been the big problem, especially since he was right. Aya couldn't defend himself in his condition and Yohji had always been very protective of Aya. Omi was glad Yohji wasn't going to put up to much of a fight against the decision.

_Did you say something in there about not killing us?_

Judging by how Ken jumped, Yohji's weapon hand jerked and Aya looked over in Mastermind's direction all of them had heard the telepath's message. Omi himself ignored Mastermind, focusing instead on Prodigy and Berserker, thinking that the words could have just been a distraction for an attack.

"Uh…yeah," mumbled Ken.

_Great, getting rescued by half-beaten kittens. Highlight of my day._

"We're less beaten than you are at the moment," growled Yohji.

_Yes, Kudo, I can see that._ Even in that exhausted mental voice, the sarcasm was thick.

"Look, we can fight later okay? Oracle doesn't look to good. Wait, he's Crawford, right? What are your names anyway?" Ken asked as he walked slowly and cautiously towards Prodigy, who had curled in on himself, shivering.

_His name is Nagi and the other one's Farfie _

'Farfie'?

_ And I'm Schuldich but what the hell do you care?_

"Guilty?"

Omi blinked at Aya, surprised that he had talked, shocked at what he had said. Were Aya's injuries worse than they had thought? A concussion maybe? Because he was talking nonsense.

Yohji say, "Hey Aya, maybe you should lie down."

Ken nodded his head in agreement.

"You can speak German?" asked Schuldich out loud

Omi almost asked what he was talking about until he remembered the world language seminar he had went to the week before. People had come from all over the world to talk to them about different languages and cultures. The woman from Germany had talked about the German court systems and Omi remember 'schuldich' from it.

"What-?"

"Schuldich means guilty," Omi told Yohji and Ken. At their confused looks he repeated more clearly, "'Schuldich' is guilty in German."

"Aya knows German?" asked Ken. He was kneeling in front of Nagi, waving his hand in front of the still boy's eyes. The boy didn't respond.

"Ken?"

"Definitely shock, but he's not injured."

Omi nodded and went in search of a blanket, trusting Yohji to watch Schwartz.

* * *

Schuldich was sure he had died and gotten shipped to some twisted insane asylum that had been built on a bit of real estate in hell.

"Kid? Nagi? You look like you had a head on collision with a soccer ball, you okay?" one of the Weiss kittens asked Nagi, who was looking the worse for wear. Schuldich tried to muster up some concern for the kid, but found he didn't have the energy.

"Only Ken would say an injury was caused by a soccer ball," he heard Kudo mutter.

_A car actually_, Schuldich corrected.

Siberian blinked at him. "What?"

_A car. A head on collision with a car._ Schuldich still couldn't believe that some idiot had tried to off him with a car, but he was too drained to start ranting about it.

He felt a flicker of concern from Bombay's mind. Concern for _him_. He pushed at the Weiss's mind, trying to figure out why, and picked up that his 'voice' had suddenly gotten hard for them to hear, softer. Schuldich himself had slumped more thoroughly against the door and his eyes had slipped closed.

"Is that how Crawford got hurt?" questioned Bombay as he carried a blanket over to Nagi.

_Yeah. The bitch who did it is in the trunk of the car._ Schuldich felt a certain satisfaction at being reminded of that.

"The trunk?" chocked Siberian.

_The hell I was letting her ride in the front seat,_ snapped Schuldich. He was getting irritable. He was exhausted and the mental whispers in the back of his mind kept aggravating his headache.

Bombay sighed and got up from where he was kneeling beside Nagi and Siberian. "Yohji would you go and get her out of the car?"

The whispering hit a dull roar, scraping against his nerves like nails down a chalkboard. He flinched, pulling into himself so that he barely heard what was going on around him.

"Why?"

He clenched his fists, grimacing at the agony in his skull. The feeling, the pain, was somehow familiar.

"Because she probably knows what's going on."

It almost felt like that time, a few days ago, when something had touched his mind. When someone had made his mind so fragile that using his power nearly knocked him unconscious.

"Whatever you say." Footsteps came closer to the door.

They were here.

_"NOW!" _Someone's yell echoed in Schuldich's mind.

The world exploded in a flash of brilliant light.

* * *

'Katzchen' means kitten in German. Schuldich will be using it _a lot._

11/18/06

6:27 PM


	11. Missing

Yohji nearly went down when the first shot caught him in the thigh. He stumbled forward, warm blood dripping down the inside of his pant leg. He was too shocked to consciously move his body, but years of training and muscle memory had him pulling out his weapon and spreading his legs into a fighting stance.

Their attackers came through the roughly door-shaped hole that had been blown into the wall, stepping over splinters of what had previously occoupied the space. They were dressed in something like the black ops. costumes that Hollywood seemed to be so fond of.

Omi put two darts into the first man that came through the door. Yohji had a second to wonder where Omi had gotten the darts before he, too, had to attack. He yanked a gun out of one of the attackers hands, right before the man would have put a bullet in the back of Ken's head.

Ken himself scooped up the Schwartz kid, Nagi, and launched himself behind Yohji and Omi. Yohji wrapped his wire around one of the attackers throats and pulled, forcing the man to drop the weapon that had been aimed Omi. When the man jerked and pulled against the weapon it didn't slice into his skin and Yohji was forced to cut the wire, leaving the man alive.

Suddenly they retreated, pulling back through the hole they had blasted in the wall. Their departure left a ringing silence in Yohji's ear. Over the frantic beating of his heart he could hear the echoes of footsteps walking quickly down the hallway.

"The hell…" panted Ken.

Yohji looked behind him to see Ken, crouched on the floor with Nagi in his arms. The kid was out, completely unconscious, but otherwise unharmed. Ken stared up at Yohji with wide eyes, not a scratch on him.

Yohji felt shell-shocked, a little numb around the edges. Everything around him was in hyper-focus, the soft lamp light suddenly too bright for him to look at. His pulse pounded like a caged animal against the side of his skull. He was so confused. Their attackers had just rushed in, done some damage, and then walked out. No word or warning, they just turned around and left. Like they had been under a time limit or something, and everyone knew exactly when it ended.

"We need to get out of here," said Omi as he hurried over to Mastermind. The Schwartz telepath lay limp on the floor, a little bit of blood pooled in the hollow of his ear. Berserker was kneeling next to him, dripping blood onto the floor from numerous small cuts and grazes.

Yohji suddenly knew Aya wasn't in the room with them. He spun around on the spot, his eyes flitting about the confined space, trying to catch a glimps of red hair, or pale skin.

Aya was nowhere to be seen. Yohji was suddenly sure their attackers had taken him. Why else would they have stopped their attack so abruptly? They had gotten what they wanted, they had gotten _Aya_, and now they no longer had a need to be here. They had left, dragging Aya behind them like a wounded deer.

"Yohji! What are you doing?" Omi shouted.

"I'm going after them!" Yohji yelled as he scrambled towards the hole where the door used to be. There were smears of blood on the floor, marks of someone being dragged down the hallway.

"Yohji! Yohji, get back here!"

He had to rescue Aya. He couldn't leave him to be...

"KUDO!"

Yohji froze, eyes widening in disbelief. He had to be hallucinating. That couldn't be possible. He couldn't be…

"Kudo, get back here. There's no point in going after them now. We need to leave," said Aya. He stood in front of the doorway to the bedroom, a sword Yohji had never seen before held loosely in one hand.

Yohji stumbled toward him, not quite sure if what he was seeing was real. "But it can't be. I _knew_…"

"What are you mumbling about?" Aya said sharply.

"Uh…nothing. Nothing."

"Good. Now go help Omi with Mastermind."

Yohji nodded, brushed his hand discretely against Aya's arm to make sure he was real, and, fighting the dizziness that was beginning to seep into his every movement, began making his way over to Omi.

* * *

Ken watched Yohji warily from where he was crouched on the floor. Yohji's breathing was heavy, his eyes dilated into wide pools of black with a thin lining of green; he limped protectively over his left leg as he went haltingly in Omi's direction. 

Yohji had panicked. Straight up-and-up panicked, and it worried Ken. It wasn't like Yohji, not at all. He would get over protective, and maybe worry too much, but he never panicked in a mission situation. It was why Yohji always took command in the 'rescue-Aya-from-whatever-he's-gotten-himself-into' situations. There had been situations like this before, with Aya caught in a fight or missing, and Yohji had never reacted so badly. At least not on the outside, or in a way that could harm the mission. Charging after the bad guys with absolutely no clue about what was happening, like he had just tried to do, would have definitely harmed the mission.

Ken looked over at Aya and saw him watching Yohji. Ken saw the frown curve over Aya's lips and then he looked over and caught Ken's eye. Aya nodded once in his direction and Ken knew he had just been given his mission for the night: look after Yohji.

"Where are we going to go now?" asked Omi. "If even this place isn't safe…"

"Then we need to go someplace else," interrupted Aya.

"And that's where?" grumbled Ken.

"Just follow me," answered Aya.

There was a bit of shuffling as everyone figured out who was helping who with the injured. Nagi got deposited in Aya's arms, who cradled the kid like he knew what he was doing, but wore an expression that said he was _not_ happy about it. Yohji and Ken got to support the still unconscious Mastermind. And Omi got to walk behind an unusually listless Berserker, prodding him with both words and hands to keep moving.

It was only then that they realized that Oracle was missing. Omi started looking around the room for him until Yohji muttered something about bloodstains.

"What Yohji?"

Yohji lifted his arm to point over at the hole in the wall. Omi quickly walked over to the spot, and then started cursing.

"They took him, didn't they?" said Ken, suddenly a little sick to his stomach.

"Probably," said Omi. "That must be why they stopped attacking."

"They're long gone, we can't do anything about him now," said Aya. No one protested when he dismissed the matter. Berserker didn't seem to notice what was going on around him, and the only other two who would have put up a fight were unconscious.

Aya lead them to a door in the bedroom that Ken had thought was a closet. He shoved it roughly open with his shoulder and they walked into a steel walled, steel floored, steel _everything_, room. He walked up to the elevator door on the far wall and then stopped.

Aya frowned down at the child in his arms and then looked over his shoulder at Omi.

"You're going to have to type it in."

Omi nodded and walked up to the keypad next to the door. "It's the numbers that manager person gave us right?" he asked Aya.

Aya nodded.

Omi then quickly typed in a bunch of number that Ken was too tired to even try remembering. The elevator doors whooshed open, they all stepped (or got carried) inside, Aya pressed one of the only two buttons on the inside panel, and the doors whooshed shut behind them.

As soon as the elevator started moving Mastermind's weight pushed into Ken, causing him hunch over and fight for his balance. There was a thunk and Ken looked down to see Yohji collapsed on the floor.

"Yohji!"

Ken dumped Mastermind into an unceremonious heap and scrambled over to Yohji. By the time he got there Omi was already checking Yohji over for wounds. There wasn't enough blood that Ken could see on Yohji for the collapse to be blood-loss induced. Kneeling down next to him, Ken pulled Yohji's head into his lap and brushed back the lanky hair to feel his forehead.

"Omi, he has a temperature," said Ken, knowing he sounded worried.

"I can't find any…oh, crap," breathed Omi. He was pulling what looked like a lumpy squashed version of one of Omi's own darts out of Yohji's thigh.

"Poison?" questioned Aya.

"I don't know. I need to get it somewhere where I can analyze it," Omi quietly replied.

Yohji suddenly moaned and twisted on the floor. Ken wrapped his arms around Yohji's shoulders in an attempt to keep him still. He flinched, mumbled something the sounded like 'you bastards, Aya', and then stilled. If it was poison, and he got shot with it during the fight then…

"Maybe…" Ken paused, swallowed, licked his lips, "Maybe this is why he was acting so weird."

"Possible," said Omi, who was now standing in front of Berserker, pulling one of those same darts out of the Schwartz's shoulder. "And it might be why this guy is acting so docile." Omi held up the dart for them to see.

"So, what? They just shoot us with darts and then leave? Assuming we're dead or gonna be soon?" asked Ken.

"They would have made sure they had shot everyone before leaving if they were trying to do that," said Aya.

"Maybe they thought they had shot everyone?" countered Ken.

"And only really hit two?" Omi shook his head. "No, I don't think so."

"And then there's Crawford," muttered Aya.

"There was nothing we could have done for him. They're either long gone, or we'd have been walking into a trap." Omi walked the short distance of the elevator over to Yohji, pulled up a limp wrist and began checking his pulse. "Faster then normal," he mumbled to himself, "Farfie's is slower."

Then elevator suddenly stopped and the doors whooshed open. Omi got up and pushed Berserker out. Aya walked out with Nagi and back in without him. They both pulled Mastermind out and then came back together to help him with Yohji, who hadn't moved since his first stirring.

As Aya and Omi got Yohji out of the elevator Ken walked behind them, only to stop, frozen and speechless, at the sight that met his eyes.

There was a train, no a brightly lit, neon-green and –blue, _shinkonsen_ resting on the tracks of an underground train tunnel. The amount of money it would take to build this, the amount of talent and connections it would take to keep it secret…

"What the _hell_ kinda people do you know, Aya!?" gasped Ken.

* * *

Crawford regained consciousness to the sound of someone slamming a large door. He kept his eyes closed, concentrating on keeping his breaths even as he discovered the pain coursing though his body. 

"What's this I hear about you kidnapping someone?" snarled a masculine voice.

An anxious female voice answered him. "Sir, it was the perfect opportunity to take away their precog. Unna told us-"

"Unna failed to carry out her task and got captured by her prey. And locked in the trunk for god's sake! Do you think I care what Unna said!? You were supposed to kill them!"

"Sir…"

"I already had one of my team die for this assignment! We were only hired to kill the telepath and the telekinetic! Kidnapping the precog and fighting Weiss was not part of the deal."

"But, sir, he said…"

"You don't follow his orders, you follow mine!"

There was a few minutes of silence.

"Is Unna alright?" said a calmer version of the male voice.

"Yes, sir. They're treating her right now."

"Update me on any changes. Dismissed."

"Sir." A light set of footsteps began walking away.

"And, Umi." The footsteps paused.

"Yes, sir?"

"Don't fail me again."

"Yes, sir."

The footsteps came again. A door opened and closed.

The male voice sighed. "Now what the hell am I going to do with you?"

* * *

The beginning started out a lot more stiffly then I would have liked, but I could _not_ find a way to get Crawford realistically kidnapped without killing someone, and I need those people alive. So sorry if it seems a little surreal. If you get that in the Yohji POV, it was supposed to be there, if you get it in the Ken POV, sorry, I couldn't figure out a way to fix it. My slightly dented wall and bruised head proves that. 

Fun Fact: Umi, while being a traditional Japanese name, is also an African name meaning 'servant'. Fits her, don't you think?

Please Review and Return!

12/21/06

12:51 PM


	12. Tentative Beginnings

FYI: in this fanfiction I will be screwing with a great deal of Aya's back story. His parents were still killed by Taketori, and he still joined the Crashers, and then Weiss, but between being a member of Crashers and Weiss he was a member of the Consortium. In order to make sure he does all the things I need him to do with the Consortium the time between him leaving Crasher and joining Weiss will be longer than in the anime. This fact does make Aya older then he's supposed to be, but I'm going to ignore that. He's still younger than Yohji and older then Ken.

Enjoy.

* * *

The damn rock band was playing in his head again. But this time it wasn't the drummer beating on the inside of his skull that made Yohji want to start whimpering. It was the electric guitar that was playing a frantic frenzy of notes six or seven octaves above humanly possible. For that instant Yohji's world consisted simply of his ringing ears, the bright pain in his head, and that screaming, excruciating music.

Slowly he became aware of the rest of his body. He found his joints ached when he tensed his muscles to try and sit up. He couldn't even twitch the fingers in his right hand and his entire left leg was numb in a way that told him he had been injured badly there.

"No, Yohji, don't try to get up." A small hand pressed down on his chest arresting his feeble attempt to move.

"Yeah, Yotan. Take it easy." Yohji heard a second person shift closer to him. "You wanna open your eyes for us?"

_So that's why it was dark._

Yohji opened his eyes, only to flinch them shut again as light stabbed like knives into his brain. The electric guitar suddenly started screeching again. Yohji moaned softly in pain.

"Yohji? Yohji, come on. It's okay."

Yohji's breathing hitched at the pain. He clenched his mobile hand and tried desperately to get the other to move. He had only tried for a couple of seconds when his body gave out. He was too exhausted and weak to move, and if he hadn't known that Omi and Ken were the two by his side _that_ would have panicked him. As it was he felt anxious and helpless.

"It's okay, Yohji. You're okay."

"Ken?" he croaked.

"Yeah, it's me. You wanna try opening your eyes again? We dimmed the lights."

Yohji opened his eyes slowly this time, peeking out from under his lids to make sure the lights were indeed dimmed. The first thing he saw was Ken's wide brown eyes staring worriedly down at him. Behind Ken was Omi.

"What happened?"

"How much do you remember?" Omi asked gently.

"Up until they attacked us," said Yohji, scrunching up his nose in concentration. "Then it gets really blurry and confusing."

"They hit you with a dart at the beginning of the fight," explained Omi. "It was a mix of a stimulant designed to up your heart rate so you're physically having a panic attack and a mild hallucinogen, probably to make sure you stay panicked, and therefore useless in a fight." Omi suddenly sounded very angry. "We were able to devise an antidote but some of the nerves in your leg are damaged. You've been out for about eight hours."

"What happened to my hand?"

"What?"

"What happened to my hand?" repeated Yohji, hearing the fear in his own voice.

Ken frowned down at him for a bit, glancing down at Yohji's hand and then back up to his face. "It's fine, Yohji."

"Then why can't I move it?" Yohji snapped.

Ken suddenly smiled gently. "Because it's taped to a board. We had to put in an IV and we wanted to be careful with the needle."

Yohji relaxed a little, some of his anxiety easing. "Can you take it out?"

"Omi?" Ken questioned, looking over his shoulder.

"Give me a minuet," replied Omi.

Omi worked quietly and carefully as he removed the IV and board. While he worked Yohji let his eyes close and relaxed into the couch he had finally realized he was laying on. He noticed the low hum around him and realized that wherever they were, they were moving. Considering how big the room was they couldn't be in a car, so they had to be in a train of some sort. But Yohji hadn't heard any other people and, apart from Ken and Omi, he hadn't seen anyone either.

"Yohji?"

Yohji opened his eyes again at Ken's query. "Where are we?"

"Underground Shinkonsen," answered Ken.

"Oh. Where…_Underground Shinkonsen?_"

"That's what I said."

Yohji stared blankly at Ken, not really comprehending what he had said. Then he slowly, painfully pulled his arms to support his weight and stated pushing himself into a sitting position.

"Here let me help," said Ken. It was only then that Yohji realized that he couldn't see Omi.

"Where's the chibi?" asked Yohji, trying to relax stiff muscles as he leaned back into the couch.

"Just over there," Ken said, pointing to the other side of the compartment. "He's checking on Nagi and Schuldich."

"Schwartz?" Yohji tried to get himself worked up over that fact, but found he didn't have the energy. Having Schwartz hanging around didn't elicit as much anger in him as it had before. Presumably, the guys that had attacked them earlier had been after Schwartz, and Yohji suddenly had a whole lot of sympathy for them.

"Mmmm. Nagi woke up earlier, but after we got him hopped up on pain killers and put a cast on his wrist he fell back asleep. Schuldich hasn't woken up yet." Ken sat down on a low chair that faced the couch.

"Where's Aya?" asked Yohji, not bothering to hide the slight thread of worry in his voice.

"He's in another compartment with Farf."

"Farf?"

"Berserker."

"Is that safe?"

"He got hit with the same dart you did. He collapsed a while ago and hasn't woken up yet." Ken smiled. "Aya is fine. Omi and I made sure he got some rest and he wasn't injured in the fight."

"So where are we going?" asked Yohji, finally starting to really wake up.

"Now that I don't know."

* * *

Aya walked slowly over to the side table of the compartment he was in. He passed Berserker on the way and pressed his fingers lightly onto the man's neck, checking for a pulse. Finding it steady, if not strong, Aya continued on his way over to the table, and the phone.

Aya supposed that Sora wouldn't be too happy with him for using the Consortium's private train, but he also knew that that telling her about the attack on the Shiro Kaze was more important than appeasing the Consortium. Anyone with enough information to attack the Shiro Kaze, for any reason, was an enemy of the Consortium and they needed to know about their enemies.

Aya picked up the phone and dialed a number that the day before he would have sworn, no matter the torture he was put under, that he didn't know. He had always kept his secrecy to the Consortium—and had sworn he would never come back. But here he was, forced to ask for help from the organization he had left.

There was a soft click as the phone was picked up on the other end of the line, but no one spoke.

"I would like to speak to the Consort's Second."

"Your title?" asked a sharp, clipped voice. It had the raspy quality of an old woman.

"Red."

The woman on the other end of the line sucked in a sharp breath. Aya heard the sound of chair legs scraping on a stone floor over the phone.

"One minuet, please."

Aya stayed silent, listening to the woman's terse breathing.

"It is nice to hear your voice again," whispered the old woman. "Here is the Second."

There was silence, then another voice came on the line. It was the deep, rich, gruff voice of a man at the end of his prime. As Aya listened he pictured the man in his mind's eye as he had last seen him. Brown hair with small flecks of sliver hanging down over calm green eyes. Tailored clothing covering the slender, athletic body of a swordsman or a dancer, of which this man was both.

"What did you say to my secretary? She looks like she just ran miles around the city."

"Hello, Yuri." Aya smiled slightly, but kept his voice professional.

"Red? I must be going senile. _Red?_"

Aya's smile got a little wider. "Yes."

"Damn. Long time no see, kiddo."

"I need your help."

"If it's bad enough to send you back to the Consortium than you definitely do," commented Yuri, suddenly very serious.

"Someone attacked the Shiro Kaze."

"_What!?_"

"I thought you might like to know," Aya said wryly, amused by Yuri's reaction even with the seriousness of the situation.

"Don't be a smart ass, Red. Where are you now?"

"We're on the Neon."

"We?"

Aya nodded even though he knew Yuri wouldn't be able to see. "My team and Crawford's."

"Crawford. Sora's friend Crawford?"

"Yes, but Crawford was taken at the Shiro Kaze."

"Well, shit. I'll call the Consortium together. It'll be at least a day before we can get everyone together though. It's the best I can do."

"That's fine," Aya said, and hung up.

Aya turned around to find Berserker watching him speculatively from his spot on the couch. When Aya meet his eyes he sat up slowly and started to stand, only to halt and fall back into the couch as his muscles gave out on him. Berserker frowned down at himself, shrugged, and then looked back up at Aya.

"Crawford was taken?" asked the man, with much more intelligence than Aya was used to from the madman. Berserker's countenance was calm, lucid, and instead of reassuring Aya it made him shift his feet into a defensive stance

"Yes," Aya replied firmly.

"Then you had better take care with Schuldich."

Aya stared at him, saying nothing. He was both started and confused by the man's statement.

Berserker took his silence as a request for more information, which Aya supposed it was, and kept talking. "Crawford is Schuldich's anchor. Without him Schuldich will start falling apart. You will need to be careful with him, and around him, until he is anchored again."

"You're very…articulate," commented Aya, hoping the man would hear the question in that statement.

"I don't feel pain and I hate God. I'm not stupid," answered the man.

Aya nodded slowly and asked, "What is your name?"

"Farfarello."

"Would you like to help me prepare something to eat, Farfarello?"

As Farfarello stared at him Aya began to berate himself for moving to quickly. But he had to. If they were to face the Consortium they had a better chance of surviving if they were united when they did. For Aya knew one single, unavoidable fact:

The hatred between Schwartz and Weiss meant _nothing_ next to the power of the Consortium.

* * *

Okay, in the next couple of chapters I will be introducing _a lot_ of new people. I'll try to make each new character memorable and separate, but if you start to get confused, please tell me and I'll try to fix it.

Review and Return!

01/14/07

11:04 AM


	13. Anchor

I had a few days off due to weather, so this is earlier then usual.

* * *

Schuldich opened his eyes to swirling, dizzying color and jarring pain. He tried to pull in enough air to scream and couldn't. There was no air. His whole mind contracted in panic as the ever-present terror rose up from the recesses of his mind and tried to suffocate him. The silvery threads that kept him safe, kept his power as something he could control, were gone. All that was left was a nauseating swirl of technicolor. Again he tried desperately to scream out the pain, and again there was no air.

Something touched him. Tepid, grayish threads tried to wrap around that power and to bind it, but the threads were ripped to shreds. Scraps of the stuff whirled like broken leaves, torn and lost, caught in power too great for them to survive. More threads came and Schuldich tried again to scream. He tried to pull away from those tendrils of power, sure beyond reason that something bad would happen if he touched them.

Suddenly Schuldich opened his eyes to see the inside of what looked like a train compartment. The two images were interposed in his eyesight. For an instant the technicolor glory of his power was all he could see, and then it was the inside of the compartment with its dim fluorescent lights and people.

Either way Schuldich still couldn't breath. He dug his hand into the carpet under his fingers and pulled his knees up to his chest, desperately trying to suck in air through parted, dry lips. Mein Gott, it hurt.

"Schuldich," someone was yelling at him. "Schuldich!"

Schuldich tried to speak. He tried to find the oxygen to answer that young, terrified voice. But again he couldn't. He could find any air, he couldn't _breathe_, and the bands of pain were constricting tighter and tighter around his chest. He could barely think through the pain. Then the room dissolved and he was again looking at the molten swirl of color.

The grayish threads were gone but others had appeared. There was an iridescent blue that looked like spun glass. It kept hesitantly coming forward, and then jerking back, never touching his power. Deep, blood red strands charged for his power with no hesitation and no regard for any of the commotion around them. These metallic strands seemed firm, steady but where they touched the colors it _burned_ and the colors went dark.

"What the hell is going on!?" yelled someone and Schuldich felt his whole body jerk at the sudden noise. Something snapped in his chest, a grinding pop that flooded his body with pain and reminded him forcibly, as he tried to scream, that he couldn't breathe. The pain dulled for a second, only to be followed by another spine-tingling crack as something else broke.

Warm green light began to twist its way through Schuldich's power. Unlike the others this wasn't thread, but thick, smooth wire. The warm metal wove its way through Schuldich's power, soothing and binding where it went. Schuldich felt a little like Goldie Locks from that American fairy tale, "too hot, too cold, and _just right_". And the green wire was just right. With every coil more of the stuff his panic began to fade.

He could breathe again. He did so in huge, gasping gulps of air that racked his entire body. Each breath brought a small flash of pain in his chest, but Schuldich didn't care. He could breath, and each lungful of air was like cool water to a man who was dying of heat.

Schuldich felt his body slump where he lay, and concentrated on taking as many deep, oxygen filled breaths as he could.

* * *

Yohji stared down at the man in his arms feeling stuck somewhere complete astonishment and absolute shock. He knew he should be repulsed by the man, by the Schwartz, but he wasn't. The only emotion he felt was the relief that it, whatever it was, was over.

It had started with convulsions. Yohji had been sitting with Ken, eating the food that Aya and—he still couldn't see Berserker cooking—had made when a noise caused him look up from his plate. It took him a second to come to terms with what he was seeing. Schuldich had fallen off of the couch and lay on the floor, jerking and twisting in pain.

Nagi was the first one to reach him. He placed his hands on Schuldich's temples and started yelling his name in increasing volume. It was only one minuet, as everyone else was rushing forward, before Nagi let out a cry of his own and collapsed.

Ken rushed immediately to the kid's side, Omi close behind. As Ken picked Nagi up and began to carry him away Omi's attention flickered between the two Schwartz until he caught Yohji's eye, nodded to himself, and followed Ken.

Yohji stumbled on his way over, catching himself on a low table and nearly collapsing to the floor himself. As he collected his scattered wits he was able to see Aya reach down to touch Schuldich's arm. Schuldich recoiled from the touch like it was a lump of burning coal.

"What the hell is going on," Yohji breathed as he began to stumble forward again.

He was nearly touching Schuldich when he heard it. That sickeningly wet snap of a bone breaking. Schuldich opened his mouth in a silent scream, and again something broke. Yohji nearly pulled away, then and there, but he didn't. He knelt down, one hand reaching out for Schuldich's forehead, the other touched his arm.

Yohji didn't really remember what happened after that. The next thing he remembered he was sitting, his back against the couch, with Schuldich curled in his lap sucking in ragged breaths. He felt lightheaded and tired, as if he had just lost a certain amount of blood. Not in shock, but almost.

Berserker knelt down in front of them, staring with his too intense eyes at Schuldich. Yohji tightened his arms around the man in his arms and pulled him closer, then realized what he was doing and stopped. He had the sudden urge to shove Schuldich on the floor, to get up and run as far away as possible from this whole thing. He wanted to get away. He wanted to forget the flash of concern he had had for the man. He wanted to erase the fact that he was holding a member of Schwartz in his arms, that he wanted to _protect_ that man.

But something told him not to.

Yohji was suddenly blinking into Berserker's eyes. The madman watched him with an intent, focused silence that unnerved Yohji.

"Anchor," he said. Then he abruptly stood up and started walking away. He paused in front of Aya and just stood there.

Aya watched him for at least a full minuet then gave his 'I have gone over everything you've said and can't find anything wrong with it, though I wish I had' slow nod. Then Berserker walked out the compartment door and Aya came over to Yohji.

Aya crouched down in front of them and reached forward to touch Schuldich. Yohji had to fight the urge to yank Schuldich out of Aya's grasp and Aya must have sensed it, for he stopped just short of touching Schuldich.

"Yohji? Is he better now?" asked Ken. He stood a little to the left of Aya and kept shifting in agitation.

"I think so," said Yohji, surprised when his voice came out hoarse and scratchy.

"You okay?" asked Ken.

"Yeah," Yohji replied absently. "Yeah, I'm fine." Yohji shook his head, flinging his hair out like a wet dog, and tried to realign his thoughts. "Is Nagi okay?" he asked.

"Omi thinks it's mostly exhaustion triggered by…whatever Schuldich was doing. I'm going to go back and check on them." Ken walked quickly out of the room, leaving Yohji alone with Aya and Schuldich.

"Um…Aya? What's up with you?" inquired Yohji. Aya had been staring at the two of them the entire time and it was staring to make Yohji uncomfortable.

"Hn," Aya hummed at him. Then he, too, got up and left the compartment.

Yohji looked down at the man still in his arms and frowned. Something was wrong. Schuldich's body was tense and he was no longer breathing like his life depended on it. Actually, he was almost breathing not at all.

"Schul-"

Schuldich exploded into action. He pushed Yohji to the floor and loomed over him, blocking out the glow from the lights overhead. One of his hands slapped down next to Yohji's head, startling him with the sudden noise and violence. The speed of the movement shocked Yohji, so much so that he froze and forgot to fight against the attack. Yohji looked up into Schuldich's eyes to see them too wide, the pupils pinpricks of shock.

Yohji was jerking his hand up, finally overcoming his previous paralysis, getting ready to shove Schuldich off him, when he felt a hand close around his throat and start to squeeze.

* * *

"Why, Crawfish, you actually got captured. I'm shocked."

Crawford opened his eyes to a dark room, the only light coming from a small barred window. His body ached slightly as he moved his head, but that was more from the stiffness of the hospital bed that he lay on than from any sustained injury. He had a headache, but it was mild and easily ignorable.

The person standing at the foot of his bed was a slight woman. She had stringy, dirty blonde hair that disappeared beyond her shoulders. Her cheekbones were clearly visible under pale, grayish skin and deep, black circles adorned the hollows of her eyes. Her collarbones stuck out of her neck and shoulders like deformities and her hands resting on the bed railing were mere skin and bones.

Crawford would not have recognized Sybil if not for the voice. That rusty, broken voice, aged beyond its years from screams and disuse. The cruel and angry young woman he remembered from his years at the consortium no longer stood before him. Instead, he was faced with a cruel, broken woman who watched him with a cold madness reflecting in her eyes.

"I thought it would be harder to capture you," she said with a gentle, deceiving smile. "But all I had to do was tell them you needed to be captured, to ensure the future, and a successful mission of course, and they did it."

"You are still using the reputation of your power to lie and get what you want, Sybil," replied Crawford.

"Ah, but it's so easy. They're just so gullible."

"And since you don't have to power to truly see the future anymore lying is all you have," said Crawford, knowing it was a mistake even while he said it.

With a cry of rage Sybil suddenly stood at the side of his bed and gripped his hand with a strength too powerful for her frail looking hands. Crawford tried to pull his hand away, but instead found a metal circlet around his wrist chaining him to the bed. She grabbed his pinky finger with her free hand and began to pull it back. Crawford continued to struggle but his movements were futile. Sybil broke his finger with a jerk and a grin.

Crawford chocked back a cry at the pain that flashed through his hand. He would have found something to say, some snide comment just to spite her, but she broke another finger and he was again forced to expend all his concentration to avoid giving her the satisfaction of his scream.

"Did you really think you could upstage me?" Sybil hissed. "That you could mock me because you think your power is greater? My master said that I could do what I want with you, as long as it ended in your death." She pulled out a gun and pointed it at Crawford's leg. "That bitch, Sora, is going to have one less pet after this."

The resounding shot echoed throughout the confines of the small room.

* * *

Two cliffhangers, bad Zarame!

Well, I have to resolve both cliffhangers in the next chapter, but it does really matter which gets resolved first. So, what do you think? Who do you want to hear about first?

Review and Return.

01/02/07

1:27 PM


	14. Puzzle Pieces

Ha! Another chapter finished. Thanks for all your reviews.

I'm going to sleep now.

Enjoy.

* * *

Aya was never one to be startled. Never one to rush into a room without knowing what was going on. But when he hear the muffled slam as something hit the floor in the compartment where he had left Yohji and Schuldich he didn't think about what he would have usually done. He was in motion, spinning around, pushing open the compartment door, before he could think. 

The tension in the room hit him like a wave of hot sand. Harsh, desperate breathing and chocked, gasping whimpers filled the compartment. Aya stood stunned at the sight of Schuldich pinning Yohji to the floor, one hand gripping Yohji's neck so tightly that his knuckles were turning white and bloodless. Yohji's hands weakly pushed at Schuldich, but had no effect on the other man. His lips were slowly turning blue.

Aya felt a hand and a shoulder shove him into a wall as Farfarello barreled past him. He reached out and caught himself before he hit the door, but winced as the sudden movement jarred his side. The ache from the healing wound in his side intensified becoming too painful to ignore successfully.

Aya looked up in time to see Farfarello pull Schuldich off of Yohji and toss him lightly onto the couch. Yohji lay there on the floor for a second, just breathing, then he jack-knifed up off the floor and scrambled to his feet.

"The..the hell…" he panted in a chocked, raspy voice. One of Yohji's hands reached up to touch lightly, and after a wince of pain, rub at his neck. His other hand was clenched into a tight fist at his side as he stared at Schuldich.

Schuldich himself was crumpled on the couch, clutching at his chest and moaning pitifully. On a groan he opened his pain filled eyes to the room. When he saw Yohji he reached a hand out, straining towards Yohji with a desperate expression twisting his features.

Yohji jerked back from the man, a confused, angry expression barely covering the scared look Aya could see in his eyes. Then Yohji did something Aya never would have expected of him. Yohji always jumped into any situation headfirst, weather that situation was angry or awkward or completely unknown to him. But now Yohji fled, pushing past Aya and into the next compartment.

Aya's first instinct was to follow him. He was almost through the door after Yohji when a pitiful, desperate, almost inhuman noise stopped him. He looked over his shoulder to see Schuldich curled in on himself, trembling. Farfarello was crouched in front of him, using his hands to stop Schuldich from harming his ribs further, but his eyes were all for Aya.

"Follow him," said Farfarello in an emotionless voice.

"Is this supposed to happen?" asked Aya, careful to keep his emotional turmoil out of his voice. "For Yohji being his…anchor, I mean."

"Schu's fighting it," replied Farfarello, as if that explained everything. "I'm surprised your Balinese isn't."

A frown crept onto Aya's face. Yohji wasn't fighting? But he was the one that had fought so hard against joining up with Schwartz. If anyone was going to be fighting this it should be Yohji. Maybe the drugs from before were still effecting him. Maybe…Aya had no idea what the other maybes there might be, but he was getting more worried by the second.

"Follow him," Farfarello repeated.

Aya left to do just that.

* * *

Crawford's scream was sweet music to Sybil's ear. The first shot into his leg hadn't induced more than a grunt. It had just grazed his outer thigh, planned to cause more pain then injury. When that shot hadn't gotten the response she was looking for she had taken another, and another. She was careful to aim all her shots so they would elicit the most pain, without being fatal. Sybil was at the fourth shot before she got the full-bodied scream she had wanted. 

"What do you think now, Crawfish? Do you think you can get away from me as easily as you did last time? I'll make you suffer before you die, and then I'll send pictures of your mangled body to Sora and make her weep," Sybil hissed. She laughed in glee at the very thought of brining pain to the two people she hated most.

"Sora will kill you," whispered Crawford. The weakness in his voice caused Sybil to grin.

"Oh, but you'll be just as dead. And thanks to you I'll be dead soon anyway. Phelan is starting to notice."

"Notice what? That you can't see the future anymore?" Sybil could see the malevolent satisfaction in Crawford's eyes.

"Shut up! SHUT UP!" Sybil yelled. She picked up the gun and fired another shot into his leg, not caring if she wounded him too seriously. "It's all your fault. You and that bitch! My master's going to kill me and it's all your fault! I'll kill you for this!"

For a second Sybil thought that the shot that echoed off the walls of the room was the one she had just made. She thought it was her shot, killing Crawford, as she pointed the gun at his heart.

She knew differently when warm blood started to spill down her chest. She collapsed to the floor, numb to the pain, but aware she was dying. She saw the leader of the team that had been hired to assassinate the two Schwartz standing over her, a smoking gun in his hand.

"Don't think you can escape," she hissed, speaking only to Crawford. "Phelan is going to kill you for evading him. You and Red are going to pay for escaping before." She started laughing. It caused her shocking, mind-numbing pain but she couldn't seem to stop herself. "Red is going to pay. I wouldn't want to be him…Phelan was angry…so angry. He won't let him escape…this time. Die. You're all going…to die."

Sybil chocked on her last breath, and was dead before her head hit the ground.

* * *

Yuri shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Of all the calls he had to make to set up the meeting this was the one he dreaded the most. Of all the people who had to come to the meeting, this was the one person he would have gladly left out. 

"He has to come," Sora had told him when he had called her earlier. "He is the Consul now; if we really do have a breach we're going to need him."

"But Red…" he protested.

"We'll do all we can to protect him, you know that. And he has his own team now."

"You think they can actually survive getting involved with the Consortium?"

"They're going to have to. Look, Yuri, I would call Phelan myself but..."

"But you need to get on a plane in order to get here in time. I know. I'll call him."

"Thank you. Try to keep him away from Red until I get there."

"I will."

Maybe it would have been better for Sora to call Phelan, even though it would delay her arrival. If Yuri had to listen too much more of Phelan's self-centered complaining he was going to do something he _wouldn't_ regret.

"What do I care if The Shiro Kaze has been compromised? It's Sora's building, let her deal with it," Phelan said in an idle, mocking tone.

Yuri shifted in his seat again, glad that Phelan wasn't able to see his irritated fidgeting. "It's more your problem than hers. You're the main enforcer for the Consortium, it's your job to stop any leaks."

"I can do that without going to a useless meeting," Phelan snapped.

"We have people coming in to give us information on the situation. _Everyone_ is coming to the meeting."

"What people? Murata was the only one at The Shiro Kaze and he's out investigating the Agano deaths."

Yuri shifted again in the chair and cursed himself silently for getting trapped in the line of conversation. He really, _really_ didn't want to tell Phelan, but he couldn't lie to him, and avoiding the question would be too obvious.

"Crawford got captured there."

"So?" Phelan replied, so quickly that it made Yuri suspicious. "That probably has nothing to do with the Consortium. He's made his fair share of enemies since he left."

Yuri frowned, wondering how Phelan knew that, but decided to forgo further questions. He had to get off the phone with Phelan before he started screaming. If Phelan already knew about Crawford, and it sounded like he did, then knew about Red as well.

"Red's coming in with his and Crawford's teams to give a report."

Phelan sudden inhale told Yuri that he hadn't know about Red. Yuri was still berating himself for his slip when he heard the 'click' as Phelan hung up the phone.

"Dammit!" he cursed. Yuri slammed his fist down hard onto his desk.

"Sir?"

He looked up to see his secretary standing unperturbed at the door. The once gorgeous woman had grown elegant and refined with age. Fine creases lined her face and her snow white hair covered her head in a short, curly mop. Her presence alone calmed him somewhat.

"It's nothing, Mari. Red and his friends should be arriving soon. Would you be able to meet them and get them settled in?"

"Of course," she said kindly. "It will be nice to see the young one again."

"Yes, it will," mumbled Yuri as his secretary shut the door. "I just hope seeing him again doesn't get him killed."

* * *

Nagi's wrist was itching when he woke up. He picked up his uninjured hand and tried to scratch at his wrist through the cast. 

"Nagi, don't do that." Omi's small, pale hands grabbed Nagi's and pulled it away from his cast.

Nagi looked up and stared at Omi. He narrowed his eyes, staring past Omi's shoulder into nothing, and tried to remember what the vague panic he still felt meant. His memory was blurry and confusing and he couldn't really remember what had been happening before he had fallen unconscious. He had been yelling…

"Schuldich!"

"Whoa! Hey, calm down." Nagi felt hands pushing him back onto the couch as he tried frantically to get up. "It's okay! Nagi, it's okay. Calm down, your going to hurt yourself."

"Schuldich," Nagi gasped again. He stopped fighting as he began to feel the aches and bruises his body had accumulated over that last day.

"He's in the other room. Farf's watching him," said Omi.

"Watching him? Schuldich…" Nagi tried again to get up, curling his casted wrist around his stomach and using his other hand to push himself up.

"Alrighty then."

Nagi was suddenly lifted up off the couch. He felt one arm holding him under his knees, the other curled around his back just below his shoulder blades. He turned his head to see someone's tanned chest covered in a green and white soccer jersey. Nagi tilted his chin up to see Ken staring down at him.

"Well?" Ken challenged. "It was either this or watch you hurt yourself."

Nagi just stared at him, not quite sure what to say.

Ken grinned and then turned to take Nagi over to the door. Omi opened the door in front of them and Ken turned sideways to carry Nagi through. Even though Nagi wanted to question this unusual helpfulness, he didn't, because as soon as they were through the door he saw Schuldich.

He was laying flat on his back, breathing in shallow controlled breaths. His chest was taped to support his ribs, but from the lined, hollowed features on his face it wasn't helping much with the pain. Farfarello sat cross-legged on the floor toying with one of his knives.

As Ken carried him over to Schuldich Nagi was surprised at the minimal amount of tension in the room. Everyone should be at each other's throats, but they weren't. He supposed Schuldich being unconscious, and the lack of the two eldest of Weiss, might have something to do with it. The lack of tension was actually…nice.

Nagi was gently set down on the open space of the couch right above Schuldich's head. He reached forward and ran his fingers through the vermillion hair, listening absently to Ken and Omi's conversation.

"Where are Yohji and Aya?" asked Omi. Nagi noticed that he kept his voice soft.

"In another compartment. I caught Aya on his way after Yohji. I guess the thing with Schuldich really freaked Yohji out." Ken wore a puzzled frown as he talked.

"Do you know where we're going?"

"No," answered Ken. "But Aya said we'll be there in a couple of hours."

* * *

And it's off to write the next chapter. Please review and return. 

Oh! Props to Thalia's review; I had to read it a couple of times before I got it, and then I started laughing and couldn't stop.

For those of you who want more Aya, don't worry. He's got more than his fair share of angst and injury headed his way.

Ta!

02/12/07

12:11 AM


	15. Enemies Abound

So, this is quite a bit longer than I usually write, but considering I spent more time on it, it probably should be.

Hints and clues, hints and clues!

Enjoy.

* * *

He didn't know what to do. It didn't make sense, nothing made sense. He wanted to kick something, scream, yell, rage at the world and at himself. He wanted to drown himself in alcohol or curl up shivering under the blankets and never come out again. Instead he held himself still by will alone, knowing somehow that if he let the flood of emotions go, let his body do what his mind so desperately wanted, then he wouldn't be able to stop.

"Kudoh?"

Yohji didn't react to the voice, only slightly registering that it was Aya's even tones traveled through the air. He sucked in one unsteady breath and tried to calm his thoughts. It didn't work. He felt too many emotions in an overwhelming tidal wave of feeling that didn't cease. Hate, fear, joy, confusion, grief, anger, panic. Panic, panic, panic. That was one he could focus on. That one didn't have any thought behind it, nothing to confuse and hurt him. Panic didn't need anything but itself.

"Yohji?"

Yohji jumped up as if the chair he was sitting in had suddenly caught on fire. He couldn't keep his footing, his legs numb underneath him, and stumbled. Strong arms caught him before he hit the ground and half carried, half dragged him over to the couch. Yohji felt the soft padding against his back and legs like an old mattress's broken metal springs. Though he knew his eyes were open, since the dryness of the air made them water, he couldn't see anything but staticy gray.

"Breathe, Yohji. Breathe."

Oh, please no, what had he done? What had just happened? Yohji felt phantom hands close around his throat like a vice. He could almost see tangled, green thread and a smear of other colors too numerous to name and too bright to look at for long.

"Yohji!"

Yohji suddenly found himself looking into Aya's intense, amethyst eyes. Feeling came back to his body in a spine tingling rush that left him dizzy. He dropped his eyes from Aya's unnerving gaze and looked down to see the man's hand wrapped tightly around his own. He almost jerked his hand away in surprise at the sight. Aya touching someone voluntarily wasn't unheard of, but it was very, very rare.

"Kudoh?"

Yohji looked back up at Aya, careful to keep his body still. He didn't want Aya to notice where his hand was and move it. Aya's touch seemed to be the only thing that could ground him and Yohji didn't want to end up back in the emotional haze of before.

"Aya, what…" Yohji paused to suck in a deep breath of air and lick suddenly dry lips. "What's going on?"

Yohji watched Aya hesitate. He opened his mouth as if he was going to say something, then snapped it shut and started to pull away. Yohji wanted to stop him, to grab him and keep contact with this anchor to sanity he had found, but he didn't. He just sat there as Aya pulled away and felt anger begin to rise within him.

"I can't believe you brought them with us," Yohji hissed, suddenly and irrationally furious.

Aya froze before him, so completely still it looked like he wasn't breathing. Yohji paid no attention to the wary, concerned look in the man's eyes.

"They're our enemies. We shouldn't be anywhere near them, much less helping them!" Yohji knew he should stop talking, that he wasn't making any sense. But somehow the whole room was off, like something was missing. It reminded Yohji of when he'd temporarily lost his hearing during an explosion on a mission. He'd sat in his room that night, watching the thunder storm raging just outside his window. It had been so eerie to watch lighting crest in the sky and to see the winds rushing things past his window without being able to hear any of it. Yohji hadn't slept at all that night.

Yohji's unease over that sensation kept pushing at him, finally prompting him to gather his feet under him and launch himself at Aya, desperate to cause someone else the confusion he was feeling. He didn't actually know how knocking Aya to the ground would make the other man confused, but he didn't pause to figure out the logic of it. He needed to lash out and Aya was the closest breathing object. He would do anything to make the feeling of someone pulling his insides out in long, thin strands stop. It was something he had never felt before and it was just this side of pain.

Yohji collided into the body before him. They toppled to the floor, Yohji only staying on top because a pair of arms clenched around him, protecting him from the hard floor. The man beneath him hit the ground hard, his body cushioning Yohji's fall. Yohji's mind was suddenly clear again, shocked out of his anger as if someone had hit a light switch.

Aya lay almost limply below him. His eyes were shut tightly, fine lines of pain crinkling the skin between his eyebrows and at the corners of his eyes. For a second Yohji was terrified that Aya wasn't breathing, but then a faint hiss escaped through clenched teeth.

"Oh, shit. Shit!" Yohji gasped around his closed throat. "I am so sorry Aya. I really…I really didn't mean…Oh, shit!"

"Get off me."

"Shit, Aya…shit! I am so-"

"Get. Off. Of. Me." Aya repeated.

Yohji finally got the message and scrambled frantically to get off Aya. As he was moving he accidentally bumped his knee into Aya's side. Aya hissed, jerking his knees up and curling protectively over his side.

"Oh, damn it, Aya. I am so sorry." Yohji said, remembering the wound Aya had received before they left the Koneko. "Aya? Are you okay? Come on, talk to me."

"Are you trying to kill me, Kudoh?" snapped Aya.

"No!" Yohji yelped, feeling the panic creep back into the edges of his mind. "No way. I really didn't mean-"

"Yohji, shut up."

Yohji did, sucking in a deep breath of air and closing his eyes. He took another breath and tried to center himself, like he remembered being taught in those damn meditation classes Omi had coerced them into taking. Aya, of course, had gotten out of it. Yohji had no idea how Aya had done it, but _he_ would have done _anything_ to get out of the 'calming experience',

Now he was almost grateful for the lessons. After just a few deep breaths Yohji felt calm and collected again. He felt like himself for the first time since all of this crap had started.

Yohji opened his eyes when he heard Aya's groan to see the redhead slowly pushing himself up off the floor. Yohji rushed forward to support him, ignoring Aya's protests as he helped him up onto the couch. Once Yohji was sure Aya was settled he got up to find a first aid kit, for he had noticed the bit of blood staining Aya's shirt.

"Hey, Aya, where's the first aid kit?" Yohji winced. Maybe he shouldn't have said that, finding the damn thing himself would at least prevent Aya from…

"I don't need-"

Yohji cut him off before he could get to very far into his 'I'm fine and don't need or want your help' speech. "Aya, there's blood leaking through your shirt!"

"Kudoh," growled Aya in warning. Yohji would have been more reassured—and scared—by Aya's tone if he hadn't seen the man wince as he shifted on the couch.

"Look, I just want to check it to make sure my little segment of insanity hasn't made it worse." Yohji was careful to keep his voice even and neutral. Aya tended to react badly to needing help, and even worse to people trying to take care of him.

A few heartbeats of silence passed before Aya answered, "In the compartment next to the fire extinguisher."

The metal next to the extinguisher was dented and dull from use. Inside was a battered first aid kit that had _everything_ you could possibly need for non-critical injuries.

"This is some first aid kit," mumbled Yohji in awe and trepidation.

"There's a better one in another compartment," replied Aya in an absent, distracted tone of voice. Yohji decided he didn't want to know how badly someone needed to get hurt to need the 'better' first aid kit.

Suspicious of Aya's tone, Yohji looked up to see the redhead pushing himself up off the couch. He had to fight the urge to rush over and push Aya back onto the couch, especially when the redhead stumbled.

Aya walked slowly over to a stiff-backed metal chair that was bolted to the floor. It suited him somehow to sit in that chair, but Yohji didn't think it was very comfortable.

The wound wasn't as bad as Yohji feared. The blood on Aya's shirt was old and dried. The bandage was stained with blood, but the blood was dry and the wound underneath was clean and healing.

"Let's just get a new bandage on this, shall we?" asked Yohji, not bothered when Aya didn't respond.

As Yohji bandaged Aya he started talking. The fact that he was bandaging Aya calmed him and allowed him to talk about things he normally wouldn't. Someone who's injured enough to need your help isn't dangerous, right? Yohji unconsciously ignored the fact that his reasoning was a little off because Aya is _always_ dangerous.

"I don't understand what's going on. I mean…shit, Aya! I wanted to _protect_ him, protect _Schwartz._"

"His name is Schuldich…and we're going to have to protect each other if we want to get through this." Now that didn't really sound like something Aya would say.

Aya was avoiding Yohji's eyes, staring resolutely down at the carpet. When Yohji moved his head to catch the man's gaze he quickly flicked his eyes over to the window curtains, never once looking at Yohji.

"Why do we have to protect them, Aya? What's so terrible that we have to work with Schwartz?" Yohji was beginning to think that he didn't really want to know, but if it was bothering Aya this much it wasn't something he could ignore.

"Before…" Aya trailed off and shook his head almost violently. In the few seconds it took for Aya to collect himself Yohji finished with the bandages, pulled back, careful not to draw attention to himself, and waited for Aya to speak.

Yohji waited so long that he began to think Aya had just forgotten his presence. But when Yohji made to get up Aya started talking quickly, stumbling over the words as they tried to escape his mouth.

"I've worked for Kritiker on two different teams. Weiss and Crashers. In Crashers I was a stand-in for one of their members who was injured. When that member returned Kritiker didn't have another place for me. I was a non-lethal and at the time all the non-lethal teams were full. When I went in search of jobs outside of Kritiker I found the Consortium. Though it might be more accurate to say the Consortium found me."

Aya fell quiet and Yohji spent the reprieve trying to absorb all the information Aya was telling him. It was more about Aya's past the Yohji had ever hopped to know. In fact the only really important things he knew about Aya's past were his sister and former name. Everything else he kept to himself, and there was no way Yohji was going to interrupt him now and risk losing this look into Aya's past—even if he didn't understand was Aya was talking about when he mentioned the Consortium.

"I worked for the Consortium for a few years, then had to…leave because of certain events. I came back to Kritiker and joined Weiss."

Aya faded out again and Yohji loathed making him continue. As Aya talked he spoke in a clinical, emotionless voice that made it seem like he was talking about some random person who just happened to have the same name as him. It was only during those long pauses, when his eyes glazed and his hands clenched in his lap, that Yohji knew this was very personal information and Aya probably wasn't telling him everything. Aya hadn't even answered Yohji's actual question. He asked again, "Aya, why are they so dangerous?"

"They're the underground of the underground," Aya said. "They're the group that polices the actions of every crime and vigilante organization in Japan, as well as many other countries." Aya was looked up into Yohji's eyes. "They're not good people, Yohji. If you gain their protection then you've got an army behind you that will do _anything_ to protect you. But if you gain them as an enemy…then you're dead or worse than dead. And I…left behind a few enemies in the consortium."

Yohji knew he shouldn't say anything, knew he would break the peace and quite of this confiding moment, _knew_ Aya would probably get mad at him, but…"We'll protect you, Aya. Whatever it is, we'll get through it."

Aya stood up abruptly, looking uncomfortable and angry. Yohji sighed, knowing he had killed any chance of learning anything further.

"If you want to be of help get along with Schuldich," Aya said stiffly. He walked swiftly out the door before Yohji had a chance to protest.

Yohji just sat there for a while, feeling cold on the inside. Aya had reacted badly, but not like he had assumed he would. He hadn't said something like 'I don't need your protection, I can take care of myself' and it freaked Yohji out that _Aya_ was acknowledging that he needed protection and in a small way asking for it.

Yohji was going to get along with Schuldich even if it killed him.

* * *

Shouhei stared down at the dead sibyl with a vague feeling of relief at her death. This contract was causing more problems than it was worth, and Shouhei didn't think it was entirely on the level. First one of his team had been killed and now it looked like a conflict between the Consortium's two most powerful members was building. That is, if what the sibyl had said was true. The new Consul had always hated the Consort, but the Consort had never lowered herself to his level and attacked back. Shouhei had always respected her for that, but now it looked like Phelan was trying to force her hand by killing one of her friends. 

"Well, I think you may be more trouble than you're worth, Crawford," said Shouhei.

"Othello…" So Crawford did remember him. That probably wasn't a good thing considering how they had parted the last time.

"I don't go by that name anymore."

Crawford tried to sit up and then collapsed back into the bed. While Crawford panted, trying to overcome the pain from various wounds, Shouhei gave him time to compose himself by calling Umi and telling her to bring in one of the Consortium's doctors. When he hung up he looked down to see Crawford a little less pale and a once again in control of himself.

"I've never liked you Crawford," continued Shouhei as if nothing had just happened. "Too much of an arrogant bastard for me. But while you are here you are under my protection and no one, especially not one of Phelan's pets, is going to kill you."

Shouhei knew the man had understood every word he had said and was purposely ignoring them. "You have a contract out on my team," Crawford said.

"But I do not have a contract on you, and it is the fault of my team you're here." That really shouldn't have mattered. Shouhei had known when he took the contract that if they planned to kill any one of the Schwartz team, they would have to kill them all.

"If you plan to kill any of my team, then you will have to kill all of us," Crawford said, and for a second Shouhei wondered if Crawford had pick up telepathic abilities since the last time he'd seen him.

"I am…unhappy with this contract'" said Shouhei, not really sure why he was telling Crawford this. "Even with Phelan's blessing it does not seem to be in the best interests of the Consortium. In fact, I am beginning to doubt that it even has the Consortium's approval." Or that the Consortium even knew about it. "I believe I will bring the matter to the attention of the Consort. You will be accompanying me."

"Neither of you will be going anywhere."

Shouhei was berating himself for his negligence even before the rifle butt slammed into his back and forced him onto the ground. Who ever was behind him jerked his arms up behind his back and he felt metal cuffs bite into the skin around his wrists. Umi was standing in front of him, a gun pointed steadily at his head.

"Thank you for calling me so promptly, but it seems we're at a bit of an impasse," she said. "I had thought I would be able to work for you for a while longer, but you've forced my hand. I cannot allow you to report to the Consortium."

Shouhei glared at her, refusing to ask why she was doing this or what was going on. They had formed the team knowing that it was temporary, but he hadn't expected it to end like _this_.

"Take them to the lower levels; we can't have any of the others finding them here."

The person behind him jerked Shouhei up, holding onto his chained hands and forcing him to walk bent over and off balance. He saw Unna dragging a barely conscious Crawford out of the corner of his eye and wondered who it was that pushed him so roughly toward the door. If it wasn't Unna and it wasn't Umi…

"What do you plan to do with the body?" said a shockingly familiar voice from behind him.

"I'll call Phelan and see if he wants it. Either way, it will be gone by tomorrow," Umi answered. She turned to Unna and said, "Unna, get him cleaned up before you put him with the others, we can't have him dying from blood loss." Then Umi turned on her two inch heel and walked out.

Rough hands pushed him toward the door and Shouhei complied without protest. He was so tempted to speak, to ask the man behind him what he was doing, but he knew that would be a bad idea with Unna still there.

They split up in the hall, Unna dragging Crawford off to the left and Shouhei being pushed a little more gently to the right.

"I bet you're just dying to ask me what's going on," came the familiar, _gleeful_ male voice.

"What the hell do you think your doing, Shige?" hissed Shouhei as he did his best to keep his voice low so no one would overhear.

"Isn't it obvious? I'm dragging my fearless leader, whom I've betrayed, down to the evil, monster infested dungeons of my new master." He sounded like a kid at Christmas.

"Are you _enjoying_ this?" asked Shouhei who was now really confused. He hadn't see Shige in over a year, but nothing could have changed the man enough so that he was having fun shoving his former teammate down the stairs.

"Hell, yes, I'm enjoying this. What's not to love about working for someone you hate and putting your best friends into his dungeons? When you see Murata can you tell him I'm still on your side? I sorta didn't have time between his thinking I've betrayed him and trying to kill me and all."

Even though Shouhei didn't really understand what Shige was saying about Murata he decided not to press the issue. Beneath Shige's light and cheerful words Shouhei could hear a fine thread stain.

"You're working for whom? Phelan?" questioned Shouhei. They had gotten off the stairs and were now walking through a brightly lit, barren hallway.

"Yep."

Shouhei wasn't sure how to answer that. Shige _hated_ Phelan, had hated him ever since he had gone into Phelan's manor in search of Red, the time he had disappeared. Red hadn't come out of that house with Shige, but Shige had said he was okay—and then, in uncharacteristic fury, had vowed to kill Phelan.

"Well, off to the dungeon with you. I'll make sure our friendly neighborhood Crawford doesn't pick up any more injuries. Be sure to get some rest, next on our agenda we have the Consortium meeting of the century to crash."

* * *

I loved writing Shige. I think I'm going to have to get him, Yohji, and Schudich drunk sometime. It'd be interesting to see what kind of pranks they'd pull on the others.

Oh! Could at least eight people review? It could be about anything: "I love _this _sentence" or "did you notice you forgot to put the 'ed' on _this_ word?" or you could tell me if you like my OCs or not. If you do review I'd have 100 reviews in 15 chapters, which would be REALLY COOL!! I would be so happy that I'd...I'd give you the next chapter early!

...now I have to go write the next chapter.

Ja ne!

6:48 PM

03/12/07


	16. To Work Together

You have no idea how much it freaked me out (and made me really happy!) to get all of your reviews. When I checked online a few hours after posting my story and found that there were SEVEN REVIEWS I was starting to get nervous. I mean, seven reviews in one day is great, but I hadn't written the next chapter yet. When there weren't any reviews for the next few hours I was like "whoot!" I don't need to freak out. I told my friend about the number of reviews, and she said I was cheating because I had asked you for them. I told her I still got seven reviews, so there. My good mood lasted until I checked my email again and realized I now had nine reviews. Then I really started freaking out. I was searching around in a panic, trying to find the sticky note where I had written the plot points I needed to go through in the next chapter. It was stuck to the left-hand corner of the computer screen and I, being the smart person that I am, was searching the floor. So, by no less a miracle than my friend (the one that told me I was cheating) walking in and saying "hey, loony bin person, you looking for that neon green thing stuck to your computer?" I bring you the next chapter.

Sorry for the delay, I blame it on the sticky notes!

Enjoy.

* * *

Aya slammed his hand into the wall of the compartment a few doors away from where he had left Yohji. He was furious at himself. Furious and confused and disgusted with himself for showing that much weakness in front of anyone, much less Yohji. He hadn't meant to show any emotion, just to warn Yohji and then get out of the compartment before the feelings and memories overwhelmed him. He'd thought he had been doing pretty well at keeping control of his emotions—at least until Yohji had said "we'll protect you". It took more then Aya knew he had to keep from breaking down right then. There was no way he was going to slice himself open so Yohji could take a look at what made him tick, even if he had felt a brief flash of warmth at the words. 

He moved to pull his hand away from the wall only to realize it was snagged in the dent his fist hand made when it hit. After a silent struggle it came loose and Aya ran his fingers over the side of his hand, already feeling the bruise forming.

The phone rang and Aya nearly jumped out of his skin in startlement. He sent a mental scolding to his heart telling it to stop beating so fast. His heartbeat didn't slow down in the least as he walked over to the end table and roughly jerked the phone out of its holder.

He didn't say hello. He didn't say anything for that matter, just waited for the person on the other line to start talking. The quality of the silence made him uneasy and he was all ready to slam the phone back into the cradle when the voice started talking.

Aya missed the first few sentences because his hearing failed him. He knees failed him too and he only missed meeting the floor head first because of the bloodless grip he hand on the end table. Even as Aya tried to stop himself from manifesting his panic physically he felt his breathing change into sharp, distressed pants.

This couldn't be happening. Not now, not after he had just relieved this voice in his head, the memory clear and knifing.

"…away from me? I hope you're prepared to pay with precious coin for the few years you bought when you escaped, Red. Don't think you're going to get away this time.."

Aya didn't know if the sentences continued or not. He dropped the phone on the floor and pressed shaking fingers onto the hang up button. A few words from Phelan could turn him into this? A shaking puddle of nerves and fears? What was he going to do when he actually had to face the man again?

Aya pressed his back against the wall and wrapped his arms tightly around his stomach. He winced and let up as the wound in his side protested, then hugged himself harder. As his legs gave way and he sunk slowly to the floor he could feel the train shuddering around him begin to slow.

* * *

Omi sipped his hot chocolate out of a coffee mug he found in the 'kitchen' section of the train. The drink was a little too hot and he kept burning the roof of his mouth ever time he took a sip, but he didn't stop drinking. If he looked completely absorbed in his drink maybe no one who ask him to deal with whatever was going on. 

It had only been a small while ago that Yohji had returned from wherever he had gone. He'd walked in, mumbled a hello to everyone—he'd even mumbled a very reluctant hello to Nagi and Farfarello—then promptly dropped himself on the floor in from of Schuldich and stared at the still unconscious man in intense, determined silence. Any attempts at asking him what was going on were either ignored or met with a desperately pissed off stare.

Omi took another sip of his drink, wincing when this time he burned his tongue, and turned his gaze to Farfarello, who was sitting quietly on the floor tossing a paperweight back and forth in his hands. The man made him nervous, despite the fact that he hadn't done anything insane or violent or anything like he usually did when Weiss and Schwartz met up. It made Omi wonder if the man was still being effected by the drugs, which inevitably led to him wondering if Yohji was still be effected too and if that explained his strange behavior.

Omi started as the couch depressed a bit next to him and almost made him spill his drink. He looked to his left to see Ken sitting down next to him, a slightly sheepish smile on his face as he apologized for startling him. Ken seemed to be taking all of this weirdness in stride. It was obvious he wasn't really concerned about Schwartz attacking them. He even seemed to be enjoying helping them. Omi sighed and shook his head; now that Ken had decided to protect Schwartz he would do so with everything he had in him. Ken was just too generous a soul sometimes. Omi didn't believe working with Schwartz would turn out quite as well as Ken seemed to think it would.

"What was the sigh for?" asked Ken.

"Do we really want to protect them?" replied Omi with a question of his own. He wasn't watching Ken as he spoke, instead trailing his eyes along the unconscious Schuldich and Nagi, who was curled up by Schuldich's head and fast asleep. "I mean, I know we're going to, I told Aya we would, but I just can't see this working." Weiss and Schwartz working together. Even if he was willing to do it Omi doubted Schwartz would be on board with the idea.

"We're going to have to try. Aya…Aya's been acting so weird since this started," mumbled Ken. Omi didn't know if he realized or not hat he'd gone off topic, but he didn't blame him for it. Aya was acting weird. He was advocating working with the people who had kidnapped his sister, and then there was this whole deal with the Shiro Kaze and the shinkonsen…

"Aya's scared," said Yohji.

Omi jerked at the sound of Yohji's loud voice breaking the silence, sloshing the liquid around in his cup. He hissed when the hot chocolate spilled onto his lap and seeped through his cloths onto his skin. He set the mug down on the end table and stood up to grab some napkins to clean up the spill. When he spoke it was more harshly than he intended as he said, "What do you mean?"

Yohji ignored him, reaching up to press his fingers onto his temple and rub at the spot above his left eye.

"Yohji, what-" Omi felt it then. A pressure in his head like someone was pressing on his brain. It wasn't painful, but a little more pressure and it would be.

Schuldich moved on the couch, groaning and twitching as he jerk his hands about and twisted his body around. Omi reached for a weapon so he could be prepared if Schuldich woke up in a less then friendly mood, but found he couldn't move his hand. He tried his other hand, but that, too, wouldn't do what he wanted. It was as if his commands just died somewhere between his head and his hands. He turned wide eyes on Ken to see the man in the same condition that he was, frozen in place on the couch, unable to move. Something hit the floor to Omi's right and he looked over to see Farfarello's paperweight on the floor next to him, his hands frozen as if he had been in the middle of tossing it. Omi wasn't sure if Nagi was frozen or not since he still looked fast asleep.

Yohji did seem to have the same problem. He was up off the floor and holding on to Schuldich in seconds. Schuldich eyes flew open at his touch and he jerk away, only to give a gasping scream at the movement. Omi watched helplessly as Schuldich flung himself off of the couch and landed on the floor with Yohji.

"Get the hell away from me!" screeched Schuldich.

In an amazing feat of flexibility Yohji twisted up off the floor and slammed Schuldich into the couch. He had his right left arm up against Schuldich's exposed neck and his left holding tightly onto Schuldich's right wrist. The movement forced Yohji to press into Schuldich's ribs and Schuldich _screamed_.

Omi could suddenly move again, but all he could do was collapse to the floor as his knees gave out from under him. He saw Ken topple over onto his side and heard another thump to his right that assumed was either Farfarello or Nagi.

"Get…away…" panted Schuldich. His head was tipped back against the couch, baring his throat to Yohji and his body was limp and unmoving.

Yohji didn't really seem bothered by any of it; he still wore the same intense, determined expression that he had when he'd walked into the room. He sighed and said, "Look, Aya told me-"

"I don't care what that damn _katzchen_ said," Schuldich cut in. His voice was rough and shaky, but loud enough that Omi could hear him clearly. "Just get the hell away from me."

"Damnit Schuldich…" Yohji faced screwed up in a frown of concentration. Omi could almost see the metaphorical wheels turning in his head. "Do you know Crawford got kidnapped?"

There was a full heartbeat of silence before Schuldich bucked in place, trying to shove Yohji away with his feet. Yohji simply shifted until he was sitting on Schuldich's legs and pushed himself further into the man. Schuldich subsided in a pained gasp.

"You want to rescue Crawford, right?" said Yohji.

Schuldich snarled back at him, "_Yes!_"

"Then listen to me!" yelled Yohji. "You're acting like Omi on four tubs of ice-cream!"

Everyone stared at Yohji incredulously for a few seconds, Omi trying to decide if he should be insulted or not. Then Schuldich stared choking. Yohji pulled away from him, looking worried and Omi was finally able to push himself up off the floor. Schuldich was making this disturbing gasping sound that sounded a lot like…

Schuldich was laughing.

"Are you high?" Yohji asked in a completely serious voice, as if he really wanted to know the answer.

Omi didn't hear Schuldich's reply because the door opened behind him. He looked over his shoulder expecting to see Aya and was surprised to find a little old lady dressed in forest green standing in the doorway. It was only then that Omi realized that somewhere between Schuldich waking up and now the train had stopped.

"Welcome," she said in a sweet, alto voice that somehow sounded ominus, "to the Consortium."

"Who the hell are you?" snarled Yohji. Omi looked back at him, surprised by the amount of animosity in Yohji's voice. Yohji looked angry and…protective.

"Mari?"

The woman, Mari, spun around on the spot. Omi could see Aya walking through the neighboring compartment. He looked pale, paler than normal that is, and was walking slowly. Omi blinked in shock when the little old woman bounded over to him and basically _glomped_ Aya. Omi wasn't sure if he was surprised by the actual glop, or the fact that Aya seemed almost _happy_ about it. He shivered from the weirdness of it.

"Oh, Red! It's so good to see you again." She let go of Aya to look back at them. "Come on, all of you, we need to get you to your rooms. The meeting's being held in a few days." When no one jumped up at her demand she raised an eyebrow in impatience. "Well? Come on. Up," she commanded.

Aya was the first one to shuffle out the door, Farfarello close behind. Mari ushered Ken and Nagi out the door next and Schuldich and Yohji followed. Yohji supported Schuldich, who protested the help between groans of pain. Surprisingly neither of them seemed to upset about the arrangement. Though Omi supposed that might be because they were still discussing the benefits of 'being high'. Omi tried harder to bock them out after he heard them say 'sex' for the second time.

Omi hesitated before stepping off the train. He felt a sense of foreboding, a feeling he would sometimes get before a mission went terribly wrong. It made him want to pull out his darts and he was reaching for them before he realized he didn't have any.

So it was, vulnerable, weaponless, and anxious, that Omi stepped out into a huge, cavernous hallway filled with old, flame-lit English lamps.

* * *

I was going to write more to this chapter when my muse whapped we on the back of the head with a wooden spoon and told me I was insane. If I wanted to kill my fingers writing more drivel it was fine with her, but she was going to bed. 

I decided that the pillows were calling to me, too.

YAWN

9:43 PM

03/18/07


	17. Phelan's Facade

This is shorter than usual, but I couldn't find a way to add more without ruining the next chapter. Sorry.

Enjoy.

* * *

Crawford was thrown into the starkly lit jail cell with the feel of two finger casts and a multitude of bandages weighing him down. His left leg, the one with the majority of bullet holes and grazes, collapsed underneath his weight and the sterile floor rushed up at him. He threw his hands out in front of his body in an attempt to stop himself before he hit the floor. He was just realizing the mistake of tying to catch himself with his broken fingers when his fall came to a jerking halt.

"Damn idiot," mumbled whoever was keeping Crawford from crashing face-first into the hard concrete. "I thought you wanted to keep us alive!" yelled the voice. Crawford could hear footsteps walking farther and farther away. "Hey! Get back here!"

"Murata…"

"Don't you say _anything_, Shouhei. You should have let me punch Shige's lights out. The damn bastard betrayed us."

"Shige isn't…"

The resulting tense silence ensued for a good minuet. During that time Crawford pulled away from Murata, who had kept him from adding more breaks than just his fingers by hitting the concrete. The room there were sequestered in was small, suffocatingly so. He only moved maybe a foot away from Murata before he was pressed up against the side of the wall. He pushed himself up against the bars of their cage, marveling at the fact that someone still used old medieval jail cells. He hissed as his tense muscles pulled at the various bullet wounds that riddled his body. None were life threatening, but Crawford was tempted to borrow a page from Schuldich's book and say they hurt like a son of a bitch.

"What? Shige isn't _what_? A traitor? A lying bastard that's working for the yellow bellied jerk that harassed Red for so long? He isn't _what_, Shouhei?"

Murata was furious. Deadly still, he stared down Shouhei with a venom that Crawford never remembered the man possessing. His dark shirt and darker pants were torn, ripped and slashed as if someone had gone after them with a knife. His back auburn hair was in complete disarray and his left shoe was missing.

"Trouble in paradise?" Crawford said nastily.

Shouhei turned glaring, pain-filled eyes down on him and Crawford felt a certain sense of satisfaction. It had been years since he'd seen either of them, but it was nice to know they hadn't had a good time of it. The last time he had seen Shouhei the man had had a gun pointed at Crawford's head.

"You shouldn't be one to talk, should you? You're down here in the damn jail cell with us," snapped Murata, switching the target of his anger from Shouhei to Crawford.

"Ah, yes, but I haven't been betrayed by my team, now have I?"

"Then why aren't they here rescuing you?" hissed Murata, disdain dripping from every word.

Crawford opened his mouth to spit his answer back at Murata, but never got that far. All his senses faded and he suddenly wasn't in the confining cell anymore. He only had a second to recognize his power consuming him before he fell into one of the clearest visions he had ever had.

They were standing in a big antechamber, one of the rooms Crawford remembered as leading up to the guest suits. All of them were there. The entirety of Weiss and the rest of Crawford's team, along with the deceptively diminutive form of Mari, whom Crawford remembered fondly as the secretary and mother hen of the Consort and her second.

The eight were talking quietly, too quietly for Crawford to hear, even though volume shouldn't have mattered during a vision. After a few minuets Mari turned and led Nagi, Farfarello, Siberian, and Bombay up the stairs toward the guest rooms. Schuldich and the two other Weiss members stayed behind.

Schuldich and Balinese were standing unnaturally close together and Schuldich seemed more relaxed than he should be surrounded by two members of Weiss. It puzzled Crawford, making him feel a sense of anger and loss that he didn't understand. He tried to reach out to Schuldich, only to find that the constant link he kept with the telepath was gone. For a second he was worried, an emotion that Crawford was both unused to and annoyed at feeling, but then he realized the significance of Schuldich staying close to Balinese. It seemed Schuldich had found a substitute anchor to keep him sane. Crawford shoved any emotion he felt about that as far away from his conscious mind as he could.

"Why do we have to stay down here?" complained Schuldich in his best disgruntled child voice. It grated on Crawford's nerves and he would have preferred this vision stay on mute if he had to listen to Schuldich whine instead.

"Because Aya needs to meet up with someone," replied Balinese. "You can go join the others if you're just gonna stand there and whine."

Schuldich mumbled under his breath in German but declined to reply.

At that moment the far door burst open and a man who could only be described as beautiful walked in. He had flowing brown hair that would have probably touched his hips if it hadn't been pulled back into a high pony tail. Two long bangs framed a face with high smooth skin and slanted eyes that gave his Anglo-Saxon features the look of an Asian woman. His tall, muscled form filled out his grey slacks and unbuttoned dress shirt effortlessly. He looked elegant and feminine, but not as delicate as Crawford remembered him. Then again, Crawford had never taken much interest in Phelan.

"Red! It's so good to see you again," said Phelan, a huge grin eating up the bottom half of his face. Abyssinian's lack of reply didn't seem to bother the man at all as he switched his attention over to the other two people in the room. "Hello, I'm just here to pick up Red and then we'll be getting out of your hair."

Abyssinian's hands were limp and trembling, his eyes unfocused.

"Red?" questioned Balinese.

"That's what that spitfire Mari called him, remember?" Schuldich said to Balinese.

"You're calling her a spitfire?"

"Of course. Didn't you see her? That lady can _move_."

"I don't think I'm talking to you anymore," said Balinese, frowning. He turned back to Abyssinian. "You okay, Aya?"

"Fine," the pale man said faintly.

"It's all good," interrupted Phelan. "Why don't you two head to your rooms while I take Red where he needs to go?"

"Well…I…" started Balinese.

"C'mon, Yohji. He's met the man he needed to wait for, right? Let's go." Schuldich turned and stared walking toward the stairs.

"Aya?" said Balinese uncertainly.

"It's fine," replied Abyssinian. The breathy quality of his voice made Crawford uneasy. It seemed to do the same thing to Balinese as he hesitated. "I'm fine. Go," he said, his voice sounding angry. Crawford thought he heard fear and desperation underneath that anger, but whether it was there or not, Balinese obviously didn't hear it. After a second of staring at Abyssinian he turned and followed Schuldich up the stairs.

"I'm surprised you didn't ask them for help like you did Shige the last time," said Phelan once the room was empty of listening ears. He had lost his jovial attitude and instead of the open and friendly façade he had worn earlier he suddenly looked cold and angry. His eyes glittered in mean satisfaction.

"Leave them alone," said Aya, his voice showing his fear just as clearly as his frozen body.

"You've grown some backbone, have you?" growled Phelan. "We'll have to fix that."

Abyssinian sucked in an audible breath.

"I have no interest in your _friends_," said Phelan, springing forward to clamp iron fingers around Abyssinian's limp wrist. "I only want you."

"CRAWFORD!"

Crawford blinked, once again looking at the inside of the small cell. His mind was still half enthralled in the vision, intent on finding out what was happening to Abyssinian. And it was _happening_ not something that would happen. That his power would show him something that was happening at that moment and not in the future was rare, but it had happened before. Crawford had always hated it, and therefore never told anyone of the talent. He didn't like being forced to watch something he had no chance of changing.

"Crawford? Did you have a vision, or are you just spacing out on us?" Shouhei was kneeling in front of Crawford.

"What would you care?" mumbled Crawford in a moment of weakness, not paying attention to his words. "The last time I saw you, you were trying to kill me."

"That was the order Phelan gave me. You were suspected of leaking information about the Consortium."

"Phelan?" said Crawford, once again remembering the vision he had just had. "Why would you follow Phelan's orders?"

"He became the Consul when the former Consul was killed."

"Killed? He was killed?"

"Yes," Shouhei said, suddenly sounding apologetic. "You were suspected of leaking the information that killed him, that's why I was given the order to hunt you down."

"Then why aren't I dead?" asked Crawford, knowing full well that anyone who harmed the Consortium was dead, no exceptions. By all rights, if an order for his death had been placed, he should be six feet under right now.

"Sora stepped in. She said there wasn't any evidence of your involvement and got the hunt called off. You disappeared after that."

"I joined Esset."

"There was that rumor."

Crawford sighed and pulled his mind out of the past. What happened back then was irrelevant to what was happening now, but it relieved him to know that his old friend hadn't tried to kill him just for the fun of it. Crawford suddenly realized he had slumped further down the wall and pushed himself back upright. His body was stiff. He must have been in that vision for a long time.

"Why is Phelan interested in Fujimiya?" Crawford asked the question that had been bothering him since he'd watched the scene in the antechamber.

Crawford saw Murata stiffen out of the corner of his eye, and Shouhei was instantly more alert than he had been a second ago.

"Is that what you saw?" asked Shige, tension straining his voice. Crawford looked through the bars to see the man standing on the other side. Murata's lack of reaction to the traitor told Crawford how important the question was.

"Phelan is…escorting Fujimiya," said Crawford, at a loss of how to explain the emotions and connotations that had swirled under the surface in his vision.

Shige burst out swearing.

* * *

I've realized ending it like that makes me very evil, but I couldn't help myself. Please review and return.

5:12 PM

04/08/07


	18. Not Quite Right

Well that took longer than I thought it would. I wanted to fit too much into this chapter and spent a couple of days agonizing about what to cut out. But that's all fixed now so, enjoy!

* * *

Aya was angry with himself. Confused and frightened and _angry_ as he just stood there passively as Phelan's fingers closed tightly around his wrist. He almost yelled in panic at the sensation, calling for Yohji, for Schuldich, for _anyone_ to come back and force him away from Phelan, because he couldn't seem to find the courage to do it himself. But, even with the knowledge that staying here by himself left him completely venerable to whatever Phelan wanted to do, Aya wouldn't call Yohji and Schuldich back to him. He wouldn't let them fall into Phelan's hands no matter what, even if he couldn't muster up the same will and protectiveness to move himself out of the line of fire.

"You've had a few years reprieve, Red, but it seems that some of the conditioning I gave you is still in place." Phelan's satisfied voice curled around Aya like a boa constrictor, tightening, tightening. "Good, good. I won't have to retrain you as much as I thought."

Aya shuddered, but his body wouldn't move, frozen as it was by the sheer amount of fear he was feeling being in Phelan's presence again. He couldn't deal with the fear alone, it felt almost foreign to him, unnatural and unusual, like he shouldn't be feeling it at all. That thought was enough to pull him out of the fear, just enough to give him an opening to blend that fear into hot, terrified, rage.

"Get the fuck away from me," Aya growled. Hearing the swear words come out of his mouth was unusual. He'd always been very careful not to swear for his sister's sake, but maybe Yohji had been rubbing off on him. He would have been angry about that, but the swearing actually helped. It made him feel more confident in his words, less afraid. It shouldn't have. He'd forgotten that any form of resistance always brought him pain.

Phelan twisted Aya wrist with enough force to throw him to the floor. It was an awkward hold, not meant to give the attacker any real advantage over the victim if it came to a fight, but Aya didn't fight it. His passivity and Phelan's strength allowed Phelan to use his hold on Aya wrist to force him to the ground. Aya could feel the bruises forming for where Phelan's fingers had broken the blood vessels.

"Don't you dare speak-"

Aya swung out his leg in an attempt to knock Phelan off his feet. The pain in his wrist helped him focus. It brought forward instincts and training that he had forgotten when Phelan had first grabbed him. His muscle weren't frozen anymore, they were tense and liquid and ready to fight.

Aya still wasn't thinking clearly or he would have gone for the knee. He should have rammed his foot into the front of Phelan's knee and snapped the joint backwards, forcing Phelan to fall to the ground, unable to stand. But instead he swung out his leg and slammed it uselessly into the side of Phelan's calf. It would leave a bruise, but Aya's awkward position on the floor didn't give him enough leverage to knock Phelan off his feet.

Phelan looked ready to kill him, his eyes narrowing in rage and his hand tightening painfully around Aya wrist, when the side door to the room flung wide open and banged hard against the wall, a huge sound in the sudden stillness.

"Phelan!"

There was a pause where Aya could only hear his own harsh breathing and then:

"Why, Yuri, what a…pleasure, to see you again. I assume you are pleased to see me as well, since I came to the meeting per your request."

"Get away from him, Phelan."

"What? But I was just helping Red up, _someone_ left a shoe on the floor and he tripped."

Aya sat on the floor and listened to Phelan, knowing that he was rubbing his power in Yuri's face. It was obvious there was no shoe on the ground, and Yuri was well aware that Phelan wasn't trying to help Aya, but there was nothing he could do. Harming former members of the Consortium wasn't against the rules; Yuri had no official power or reason to stop Phelan.

"I sure he appreciates your _help_." The bitterness and sarcasm in Yuri's words was almost tangible. "But he needs to rest up and get ready for the meeting, as do you."

Phelan had never been one to go for public scenes. He much preferred to do his dirty work behind closed doors. Aya almost sighed audibly in relief. Yuri had given Phelan a way out of a public scene—something he would take without reservation—and at the same time had kept Phelan from carting Aya off. Phelan was going to have to walk out of the room without him.

"Ah, yes, I do," replied Phelan. If he felt any frustration over the failed success of his attempt he didn't show it. He looked down at Aya. "I hope to speak to you later, we have much to discuss, in private."

Phelan didn't give Aya time to reply as he turned and stormed slowly and efficiently out of the room. Aya stared steadily after him as he walked down the hallway until he turned and walked out of sight.

"Red?"

Aya flinched back from the voice and found himself staring into Yuri's concerned and cautious face. He sat there for a second, waiting for the fury to come back, waiting to be angry at himself for how weak and unprofessional he had acted when finally faced with Phelan, but that anger had deserted him. He felt cold and exhausted, the only points of heat being the wound on his side and the pain in his wrist.

"Do you want me to get you something?" asked Yuri. "Maybe one of your teammates?" He was still crouched in front of Aya, being careful not to startle him, for which Aya was grateful. He felt like any sudden movement would send him screaming back into the terror.

Did he want one of Weiss to see him like this? Crumpled on the floor after letting himself be pushed around by the enemy? Omi would start trying to mother him. Give him wide, concerned eyes and try to get him to talk about it. Omi would do it all with good intentions, but Aya didn't want to talk about it, didn't even want to think about it. And Ken? This would freak him out. He tended to believe that everyone wore their personality and their heart on their sleeve, since he did. Seeing Aya acting unlike himself, or different from what Ken pictured Aya to be, would freak Ken out. He'd probably be even less help than Omi, jumping between fear _of_ him and fear _for_ him.

"Yohji," Aya whispered, unsure if he was making the right decision or not. He should just get over this by himself and stay far away from his teammates until he got himself back under control. But his hands were shaking, something he remembered happening after his last encounter with Phelan, something that hadn't gone away for a good week after the events at Phelan's mansion, and he was shivering because of a cold that, he was sure, wasn't because of the temperature of the room.

Yohji wouldn't be too hard to deal with. He already knew a little about the Consortium and Aya's reaction to it, even if he didn't know anything that had happened. Yohji wouldn't push him, and he would keep Ken and Omi from doing the same. Yohji would act calmly and rationally when he couldn't.

_Damn you're screwed up if you think Blondie will ever act rationally._

Aya sucked in a gasping breath and flinched back, panic clawing through him at the thought of someone being in his mind. It was too soon after seeing Phelan again, too close to what he had done. Aya forced himself to keep still, to calm down, to keep himself from hyperventilating, but he knew he was failing.

_Whoa! Shit. Okay, alright, I'm leaving. Calm down._

_Careful, Blondie. He's freaking out._

The presence in his mind was gone. He could still hear someone talking, and he knew it wasn't out loud, but he was just overhearing it. It wasn't in his head anymore. Aya felt less panicky and started to calm down.

_I can call you 'Blondie' if I want to. It's not like you can stop me._

"Shut up." That was Yohji's voice. "Aya, buddy? Can you talk to me? Do you wanna open your eyes?"

His eyes were closed? Aya didn't remember closing his eyes, but sure enough when he open his eyes it was to see Yohji kneeling in front of him and Schuldich sprawled off to the side, as if someone had pushed him. Aya wasn't really comfortable with Schuldich witnessing his little breakdown, but he was glad to see Yohji. And he was angry and confused at himself for being glad about it.

"Yohji?"

_That's his name, don't wear it out._

A hand came out and pushed Schuldich further into the floor so that the vermillion haired man lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Yuri sounded more amused than apologetic when he said, "Sorry, Red. I couldn't get this pup to stay behind when I brought Yohji down. And unfortunately, it's kind of hard to get him to stay quiet; I don't have a muzzle on hand."

_Stop making canine references about me!_

"You make a better dog than cat," said Yuri.

"Yeah. And now we have a nick-name for you, since you insist on calling us kittens. How's it feel to be on the receiving end, eh, puppy?" teased Yohji.

_Hey!_

Aya knew what they were doing. Well, he knew what Yohji and Yuri were doing. He wasn't quite sure what Schuldich was doing, or why he hadn't shot Yohji and Yuri yet for teasing him. But in any case they were all giving him time. Time to get used to them being there, time to calm himself down, while they bantered and left him alone. He didn't want to be truly alone, but he also didn't want to deal with people, and they somehow understood that. The amount of understanding and insight expressed in that would have made him uncomfortable if he wasn't so grateful for it.

Aya leaned back against the padded arm of the loveseat behind him to give himself time to calm down, and watched the show.

* * *

Schuldich felt it the second Abyssinian—he couldn't quite bring himself to call him 'Aya' yet—fell asleep. His mind cleared of the conscious emotions he had been feeling and the vague, half-built, fuzzy images Schu had been picking up ceased altogether. The panic and fear were gone, but Abyssinian's mind shifted uneasily in his sleep.

"Okay, what the hell is going on?" growled Yohji. "What happened to Aya?"

Schuldich focused on the scene before him to see Yohji staring down angrily at the older, elegant looking man whom Schu recognized as 'Yuri' from Abyssinian's thoughts.

"Yeah, Yuri, what's going on?" question Schuldich wondering how the man would react to him knowing his name.

"You know my name?" said the man, turning away from Yohji to look at Schuldich. "Telepath, then?"

Schuldich blinked then, not quite sure how to react. No one had ever acted with such…nonchalance when learning of his powers. Terror? Yes. Suspicion? Yes. Sudden eagerness to use him and his power? Ooh, yes. Casual acknowledgement? Uh-uh.

"Who cares about that?" Yohji snapped. "Back to the issue here, what happened to Aya?"

Schuldich felt Aya's mind twitch. "Cool it, Blondie. You'll wake him up."

Yohji stopped glaring to look nervously over in Abyssinian's direction. The man was flush against the loveseat, his head tipped back into the cradle of the arm and the seat. He didn't look really relaxed, one knee still drawn up to his chest and his hands curled tightly in his lap, but he was asleep. Not quite REM yet, but that could be a good thing. Form what Schu felt in Abyssinian's mind any dreams wouldn't be pleasant.

"Do you think we can move him upstairs without waking him up?" asked Yohji.

"I can keep him under while you carry him up," offered Schuldich, knowing even as he said it that the proposal would be rejected.

When Yohji didn't immediately protest the idea Schuldich was surprised. But from the thoughts he was picking up from the blonde, the man cared more about his teammate than he did about 'staying enemies with the enemy'.

"I can't believe I'm even considering this," said Yohji, turning to look at Schuldich. "I should be horrified at the very idea. But, would you?" He looked back over at Abyssinian. "He'll kill me if he wakes up while I'm carrying him up the stairs."

"Just give me a second," Schuldich said, easing himself over towards Abyssinian. He'd have to put him under deeply since he wouldn't be able to touch him as they went up the stairs. Stupid tactile amplification. It would be easier if Schuldich could carry Abyssinian up the stairs himself, but the ache from his ribs told him that no way was he lifting anything heavy, much less the sleeping leader of Weiss.

"And you—Yuri, right?—you're gonna come upstairs with us and explain everything. Understand?" Yohji hissed quietly. Schuldich could feel Yohji's anger echoing in his own head.

Schuldich put his hand lightly on Abyssinian's forehead and pushed carefully at his thoughts. He reached in with his power and quieted the man conscious thoughts, nudging him deeper into sleep. Then he coated Abyssinian's mind lightly with power. It was more difficult than he was used to, and his power kept draining more and more as he tried to make sure Abyssinian would stay asleep. It was unusual, and it forced him to pull on a little bit of Yohji's energy. Just a little bit, not enough that Yohji would notice, but it seemed to be enough. The thin skin of power that pulsed with soft orange and swirls of green kept Aya's mind quite and lulled him into REM sleep.

Since when had Weiss' leader become Aya?

"I'll follow you up and explain what I can," said Yuri. "Only Red, and possibly Shige, knows the whole story."

Yohji seemed to be satisfied by that as he scooted himself over to Aya and Schuldich and carefully lifted the sleeping man up. He winced and was favoring his left leg as he stood, but he got himself upright with Aya securely in his arms.

"He will so kill me when he wakes up," he mumbled.

"You're injured," said Yuri, probably noticing the limp. "I'll carry him up."

"No," replied Yohji as he turned and started towards the stairs.

"If you're injured you may fall and hurt him on the way up."

"No," repeated Yohji, not stopping.

_Schu, can you make sure he follows?_

Yohji was speaking to him with his mind? Assuming that Schuldich was reading his thoughts? And not freaking out about it?

_We're right behind you._

The trip up the stairs was slow, but they made it to the hallway without mishap. The door to the common room was open and Yohji walked through with Aya first, then Yuri, followed by Schuldich. Schuldich closed the door behind him and locked it, glad for that small line of defense.

"Yohji?" asked Omi. "What's wrong with Aya? Is he hurt?"

"He's just exhausted, Omi, don't worry," replied Yohji as he walked continued toward the one of the bedroom doors. "I'm gonna put him to bed. You wait out here, okay?" He got to the door and then turned around, looked directly at Yuri, and said, "You sit down and stay there, when I come back out you'd better be ready to explain everything."

Yuri nodded and sat, but Yohji didn't see it since he was already through the door.

Schuldich turned to Omi and asked, "Where are Nagi and Farf?"

"They're in the other room with Ken," replied Omi, pointing to the far left door. "What's going on?"

"Make sure he doesn't go anywhere," Schuldich said, pointing at Yuri. "And you'll find out." Then he walked after Yohji and into the bedroom.

Yohji was drawing the blankets up over Aya's still form when Schuldich walked in. He stepped back quickly when he noticed Schuldich, breaking the tender moment to Schuldich's relief, and stumbled. Schuldich had one hand on the man's elbow and the other on his back before he had time to think and remember that moving suddenly around a wounded assassin was a bad idea.

Yohji had his elbow in his stomach and a fist aimed at Schuldich's head before either of them realized what was going on. Yohji froze and Schuldich grunted in pain as he released the man.

"Shit, sorry," said Yohji, warily backing away from him.

"'S fine," grunted Schuldich, wondering even as he did why he wasn't trying to knock the other man's lights out. Yohji must have been wondering the same thing since he backed up another step. "Go out and get the information you need out of Yuri. I'll just stay in here." Schuldich eased himself onto the floor and leaned back against the wall, taking care not to jar his ribs any more than necessary.

Yohji frowned at him for a bit, then nodded. Schuldich picked up the thought that Yohji was considering if he, himself, was insane for trusting Schuldich not to hurt Aya when he left the room. But it appeared that for some reason he did, so he just said, "Call if you need anything, or if he starts to wake up," and left the room.

It was that sudden, complete trust that clued Schuldich in. He reached out for Crawford's mind and found out that it was missing. His link with Crawford was gone and in its place was a thin green strand of thread that led all the way back to a certain blondie's mind.

"No ef-ing way."

_That_ was why Yohji hadn't killed him yet. _That_ was why the Weiss trusted him not to hurt his teammate. He had enough of a link to Schuldich's mind to know that the telepath had no intention to do anything but lick his wounds and try to survive whatever was going on. He wasn't freaking out about the two teams working together as much now because he knew through Schuldich that there was no ulterior motive.

And _that_ was why Schuldich felt so calm around the blonde. He was using him as an anchor and in doing so he was seeing everything through Yohji's film of understanding, the same way it had been the first time he had anchored his mind to Crawford. Whatever Yohji felt Schuldich felt to a lesser degree. His concern for Aya, his anger towards Yuri, his trust towards his teammates. Schuldich felt all of it and was acting accordingly.

"Wonder what Crawford will say about this?" he mumbled. Then he chocked out a laugh.

"I am so fucked."

* * *

I've had a busy few weeks, but my life's starting to calm down now, so I should begin to update more regulary and with longer chapters. Knocks on wood.

Hope you liked it.

05/08/07

3:19 PM


	19. Minor Deception

Gomen! I had this finished except for two paragraphs for the last two weeks, and kept saying 'oh, I'll finish it tomorrow'. Well the tomorrow of two weeks ago happens to be today. Gomen!

Hope you're still there.

Enjoy

* * *

Yohji eased himself down into the chair across from Yuri. The man looked like he was a couple years older than his prime, possibly 40-ish, but still in top condition. He was leaning back in the chair, comfortable but for the fine tremble of tension that radiated off him. He had the same build as Aya, elegant, lithe, trim, and Yohji could see the same sword wielding calluses on his hands that covered Aya's.

It took a great deal of effort for Yohji not to hate the man on sight.

"So what happed to Aya?" asked Omi, sitting in the chair off to Yohji's right.

"I don't know. What did happen to Aya, Yuri?" demanded Yohji, not bothering to tone down the anger in his voice.

Yuri shifted uncomfortably in his chair and said, "I'm not sure where to start."

"Why don't you start where you came up to get me specifically, only to bring me back downstairs to find a terrified and trembling member of my team in the one place that's supposed to be _safe!_"

"He asked for you."

"What?" exclaimed Yohji, not understanding the significance of the statement through the haze of anger he had surrounded himself in.

"I asked if he wanted one of his teammates and he said 'Yohji'," replied the man, more calmly than any of his other statements had been.

Aya had asked for him? Aya never asked for anyone, especially not if he needed help. Yohji had started to think it was impossible for Aya to even admit he needed help. And he'd walked in on Aya enough times stitching his own wounds together to believe it. But this time Aya had _willingly sought his help._

The wonder over that realization kept Yohji from hearing what Omi asked next but the vehement anger and bitterness in Yuri voice when he relied 'Phelan' was enough to refocus Yohji on the conversation at hand.

"Phelan. He was talking with—being talked _at_ by Phelan."

Yohji felt a little curl of fear twist in his stomach.

"Who's Phelan?" asked Omi, the tension is his own voice rising to meet Yuri's.

"He's a lot of things, but I think the one you're most interested in would be that he's the reason Red—Aya—left the Consortium."

"_I worked for the Consortium for a few years, then had to…leave because of certain events,"_ Aya had said.

"What happened?" asked Yohji, not really sure if he wanted to know, but knowing he _had_ to. If it was a problem for Aya—and from the looks of it, it still was—then it was something the rest of them would have to deal with as well.

"No one really knows for sure. Shige might, but no one's seen him since a few months after Red got out. And Red—he may or may not remember all of it. We tracked him to Kritiker, then hid his presence and severed all connections he had to the Consortium."

"…_leave because of certain events."_

"What happened?" Yohji repeated, not even angry at the other man for avoiding the question since he wasn't even sure he wanted to hear it himself. The fear he had felt before was getting stronger and more nauseating.

"From the moment Red joined the Consortium Phelan was interested in him. It had been about a year since his lover, the old Consul, had been killed, so most of us were pleased when he started showing interest in finding someone again. I don't think Red even noticed until Phelan started getting insistent, but by then I had already discovered that Red wouldn't be adverse to that type of attention from another man, so I wasn't concerned." His voice betrayed a self-mocking bitterness as he spoke.

"Aya's gay?" asked Omi.

"Bisexual as far as I know," answered Yuri, turning to see Omi. "He doesn't seem to have anything against any type of sex as long as it's consensual."

Omi looked shocked for a second, then thoughtful. Yohji figured he was reviewing every conversation he'd ever had with Aya and looking for anything that would support what Yuri had just told them. Yohji would have been more interested if the memory of Aya cured up against the loveseat shaking wasn't still burned into his mind.

"What do you mean by 'insistent'?" he said.

"At the time I thought it was nothing," said Yuri, the bitterness seeping back into his voice. "But Shige…he didn't like it, he didn't like it at all. He started off saying it wasn't like Phelan and ended up raging about harassment. We should have listened to him."

"Why?" demanded Yohji.

"Because a few weeks later Red disappeared."

The fear tightened like a band across his chest. Yohji began to hear the things around him muffle, as if he was at the edge of a canyon listening to someone below him. He only caught a word or two of what Yuri was saying between frequent waves of fear.

"…month before…found him…Phelan's…"

_Aya moaned on the bed, twisted around as if in a nightmare…_

"…Shige went…escape…"

The band tightened again, but this time it was around Yohji's head instead of his chest.

"…Red left…Kritiker…"

_The panic from Aya's mind caused Schuldich to stumble and fall against the bed, hissing in pain as he jarred his ribs._

"…only Shige knows…"

_YOHJI!_

Yohji bolted up out of his chair and was halfway through the door to the bedroom before the last syllable of his name finished echoing in his head. The tableau before his was exactly as he had seen in his mind. Schuldich was crumpled on the floor by the bed, clutching his chest in pain. Aya lay on the bed looking horribly vulnerable and exposed with the covers he'd flung off in agitation scrunched at the bottom of the bed.

There was something wrong with Aya's breathing. It wasn't so much breaths as short gasping sounds interspersed with pained cries too short to be called moans and to deep to be called whimpers.

Yohji had only suffered one panic attack in his life, the night it had truly sunk in that Asuka had died, but he remembered the experience vividly enough that he could recognize the symptoms.

He walked quickly over to the bed, climbed up onto the edge, and pulled Aya up into a sitting position, hoping to help calm the panicked breathing. There wasn't much else he could do but try to get Aya to calm down. A panic attack wasn't really harmful, just terrifying for all involved.

"Yohji?" Omi's worried voice inquired from the doorway.

"Just a panic attack," assured Yohji. He pulled Aya closer as his breathing eased a little. He was still shaking, and Yohji could feel his heart beating against his chest like a trapped bird, but he wasn't making the chocking, gasping noises anymore. "He'll be okay in a bit."

Omi didn't look reassured, but nodded anyway. "Ken and I'll deal with everything else; get us some food and clothes and such. You just take care of Aya, okay?"

"'Kay," agreed Yohji.

"We have a doctor," said Yuri, who was also standing in the doorway, right behind Omi. "I can send him to look at all of your wounds and help with the healing," offered Yuri.

Yohji was ready to disagree, thinking of their previous encounter with an unknown doctor—who turned out to be an assassin. He wasn't inclined to trust this new set of unknown people just yet, especially not to treat his injured teammates.

_He's sincere in his offer._

Yohji didn't even glance down at Schuldich, he just took his word on the subject and said, "That would be appreciated."

Omi and Yuri both left then, Omi quietly shutting the door behind them.

_That wasn't really a panic attack,_ said Schuldich resorting, Yohji knew, to telepathy since he didn't want to try talking through broken ribs. _He's been sleeping the entire time. His body is just responding to what his mind is feeling._

"What do you mean?"

_He's still in REM sleep. I think he's trapped there, reminiscing 'bout the good ol' times in the Consortium._

"Can you wake him up?"

_I can try, but he's always had really good shielding. He'll probably feel me trying to get into his head and jump even further off the deep end._ "End up worse than he is now," said Schu out loud. His voice wasn't more than a horse whisper.

He probably would get worse, thought Yohji. Aya didn't trust Schu, no matter how much he proclaimed wanting the two teams to work together, and having someone you didn't trust jump into your head definitely wasn't a calming experience. Yohji hadn't missed Aya's earlier reaction to Schuldich's probe either, when they had gone down to get him with Yuri. But if they couldn't wake him up without going into his mind…

"Could you send me in?" asked Yohji, hoping his sudden brilliant idea was possible.

"What?"

"Could you send me in? He probably trusts me enough not to freak out to much." Especially if he had really asked for Yohji earlier.

"I…" _well, I…maybe I could. Yeah. Yeah, I could. But I'd have to come in with you._

"Come in with me?" asked Yohji suspiciously.

_I'd have to be able to pull you back out somehow,_ he grumbled.

"Oh," Yohji said sheepishly, but he refused to apologize. He gave a nervous little laugh, "Well then, what are we waiting for?"

The room melted—or maybe evaporated was the better word—into a field of mist. The kind of swirling, creamy fog that comes from dry ice covered the ground at Yohji's feet. He stood statue still and peered blankly into his surroundings.

"Hello?" he called, jumping when the echo ghosted back to him, 'LO, Lo, lo…'. Otherwise it was silent.

There was movement to his left. A sudden shimmer in the light that was somehow very familiar to Yohji. It reminded him of the one mission where they had infiltrated that one fighting tournament and Aya had chased Taketori up onto the roof and thrown his sword at the retreating helicopter. The reflection of the moon had followed the blade of the katana as it flew through the sky.

Katana…the shimmer was the reflection of a katana blade.

A sharp point suddenly pressed into the skin of Yohji's neck, distressingly close to his Adam's apple. He felt a thin trail of warm blood slide down his neck from that point and into the hollow of his collarbone.

From his frozen position he couldn't see the katana that was pressed into this throat but he could see the man who was holding the weapon. He was skeletally thin, his ribs easily seen through the skin on his bare chest. Bruises covered his body, in varying shades of blue and violet. Around his neck were the deep purple bruises of four fingers and a thumb. Another, faded bruise dusted the bone on his right cheek, just below the dark circles of his eyes.

Empty, familiar, _amethyst _eyes that stared at Yohji's face without a hint of recognition.

* * *

"I don't have time for this, Umi. I have a meeting to prepare for."

"I'm sorry, sir. But it seems that Crawford, Shouhei, and Murata have escaped our custody."

"_What?_"

"It seems they overpowered one of the security and escaped the building without our notice."

"One of the security?"

"A guard, sir. Hired from the area. One Kyou Tanaka."

"And is he conscious yet?"

"They, ah…they took him with them, sir."

"They _what?_ You incompetent fool! How much information does he have?"

"I…I don't know, sir. Not enough to cause problems."

"Not enough to cause problems but _you don't know!_"

"He will resist interrogation for as long as possible, sir, it will give us time. We're searching for them right now…"

"And what makes you believe that he will hold up to interrogation?"

"His profile says he's a former cop, sir, with dealings in the Yakuza."

"Which Yakuza?"

"The southern Tokyo affiliation, sir."

"Southern Tokyo? And a cop? But that sounds like…what did you say this man's name was?"

"Kyou Tanaka."

"And how well did you research him before you took him on?"

"Sir, a recommend file came in from the Consortium when I asked about muscle in the area. He was tagged as someone who had worked previously with Spiel. When he came in asking for a job I just assumed-"

"Spiel! That's Shouhei's team. Did this man have a scar down his right cheek? A few inches under his eye?"

"Yes, sir, it showed he had been in battle befo-"

"I put that scar there after the man attempted to kill me! And you hired him? You actually hired Shige? Did you even do a background check?"

"Yes, sir, the Yakuza confirmed the reference-"

"That was a rhetorical question, you fool. If you want to survive your employment you had better find them. Shige will tell them everything they want to know, and no amount of safeguards you put on the information will have stopped him from finding out everything. I want them found, Umi, and stopped, whatever it takes. Do not let them reach the Consortium, even if they have to end up as corpses."

"Yes, si-" But Phelan had already hung up.

* * *

By the time they avoided getting recaptured—a rather harrying task of jumping around a corner whenever someone heard footsteps—and got everyone onto the plane, Crawford was half unconscious, Shouhei was in search of aspirin, and Murata was looking for the weapon best suited to kill Shige.

"Dude, you need to get over it!" said Shige, letting a hint of his irritation color his tone for a second. "So I knocked you unconscious and stuck you in a jail cell, so what? I had your best interests at heart."

"My best interests at heart, huh? Whose 'best interests' did you have in mind when you signed up to work for Phelan?"

Shige summoned a pretty little, obviously fake frown onto his face as he sat down in one of the plane's spacious seats. "Hold on, I gotta think about that for a bit. Let's see, I obviously didn't do it for Phelan, since I hate the guy. If I work for him, when I could easily find a job somewhere else, it must be for a reason, right? Maybe I'm like that American character, James Bond, infiltrating the enemies operation so I can gather enough information to bring the creep down."

Murata didn't sound mollified at all as he said, "You didn't seem very 'undercover hero' to me when you came after me with your little band of evil doers."

"No, I was too busy getting shot by one of my best friends," mocked Shige, lifting up his arm to show the, admittedly non-serious, graze wound on his arm.

Murata looked down at the carpet. "It looked like you had betrayed us."

Shige felt a flash of guilt for using Murata's responsible nature against him, knowing the man would feel guilty for hurting him even though Shige didn't really hold him at fault. As far as the other man knew at the time, he _had_ betrayed them.

Shige grinned, half apologetic, half willing to forgive, as he held up an imaginary martini, "Arai, Shige Arai."

"Jerk," mumbled Murata. "Suicidal Jerk."

"That's my name, don't wear it out!" said Shige cheerfully. He was glad Murata had forgiven him, even gladder that the man had done it _without_ demanding the full story. That showed an awful amount of trust.

Shouhei walked back in from the front of the plane. "The runway's cleared for take-off and I've jammed the radio tower so they won't be able to track us. Murata get up there and pilot," Shouhei ordered.

Murata frowned. "You're a better pilot than I am."

"But I need to talk to Shige," replied Shouhei. "You can leave the communication system on and listen over the intercom."

Murata shuffled toward the front of the plane to do a preflight check, while Shouhei went over to check on Crawford.

"We'll have to get Rori to look at him when we get to the Consortium," said Shouhei as he came back to sit down after strapping Crawford in and giving him a dose of painkillers. "There's not much we can do on the plane."

"How is Rori?" asked Shige. Out of all the members of their old team Rori was the only one whose whereabouts Shige knew nothing about. The team had disbanded after the old Consul had died, preferring to go their separate ways rather than have to learn to work as a team under a new Consul. They'd all stayed in the Consortium though, at least until Phelan had kidnapped Red. Then they all left the Consortium, unwilling to work close to someone who had hurt a friend. Shige'd kept track of both Shouhei and Murata after the split, at least peripherally, but Rori had slid under the radar. The guy was probably scheming something somewhere.

"He's actually the Consul's Second now," replied Shouhei.

"He's working for Phelan?" asked Shige, incredulous.

"Yes, and he's refused to talk to either Murata or me about the subject," said Shouhei, a little sadly. "He doesn't talk to us much at all anymore."

"Is he truly working for Phelan? Cohorts and all that?"

"It looks like he truly is working for Phelan," Shouhei sighed.

There was a moment of silence as Shige shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Shouhei finished buckling himself in, in the seat across from Shige. He felt the plane vibrate as Murata started up the engines, and then after a quick take-off announcement from Murata the plane began to roll forward.

"How did you get Phelan to hire you anyway?"

Not really expecting the question, Shige frowned for a second then said, "I used one of my aliases, Kyou Tanaka. I'm a little surprised I didn't get caught, since I never found the time to change my name in the police's hard copy records, it's still Shige Arai and that would have given me away in a second. Though I suppose they wouldn't go up to the police and ask. My Yakuza connection was real, and in that name, so that must have been what convinced them to hire me."

"Have you been after Phelan since you left the Consortium?"

"Yeah," answered Shige. The plane had left the ground. Shige felt the stomach dropping sensation of the plane climbing in the air.

"You could have asked us to help you."

Shige shook his head. "It was easier to infiltrate the place with just me. And no one in the Consortium expects me to be responsible, so it was easier for me to drop off the face of the earth than any of you. If all of us had disappeared it would have been suspicious."

"Suspicious? For us to go on say, a vacation, together?" Shouhei scoffed his disbelief evident.

"Boy, do I have a lot to tell you," Shige said smile, filled with bitter irony.

Shouhei raised an eyebrow that said, _and are you going to start?_

"First you need to know the Phelan hasn't really been on the level with the Consortium," said Shige, unable to speak without fine sarcasm coloring his tone. Then he said seriously, "Then you need to know that Red's in _a lot_ of danger. More then you realize."

"There was more to Phelan's interest than just sex, wasn't there?" said Shouhei solemnly. "I've suspected something since you came back from Phelan's and told us Red had escaped, but wouldn't say anything else."

Shige nodded and said, "I'm not going to tell you too much, not without the say-so from Red, but no, Phelan didn't just want him for a date.

"He wanted him as a weapon."

* * *

Well, that was sorta mean of me. I totally set it up like I was going to tell you everything and then, well...I didn't. Guess you'll have to stick around and read the rest, huh? That is if you haven't stomped off in a huff, 'cause I'm a foresworn updater and never actually do it when I say I will. Bad Zarame, no cookie.

I obvioulsy need to get more sleep, if I can't even give myself a mental cookie.

Return, please, even if you don't review.

08/03/07 12:05


	20. The Minds of Others

I'm not really satisfied with this chapter, but I couldn't change it into something I liked in the month I tried, so I figured I'd just post it anyway. Hope you like it better than I did.

That make's it sound terrible, and it's not, the end just...bothered me.

Have fun with the beginning though.

* * *

Schuldich threw himself at the mental wraith that was Aya's form in this misty landscape in hopes of keeping Yohji from getting his throat slit. The sudden appearance of the blade wielding assassin had startled Schu, but his reflexes had kicked in just in time to keep his new anchor for getting his mental throat cut open like a fish fillet. All it took was a simple push and Aya's skeletally thin form crashed onto the ground with a thud and lay still.

"Holy shit! What just happened!?" demanded Yohji from his protected position behind Schuldich's back. He had reached up his hand and was wiping the blood off his neck. He held his fingers up in front of his face and stared blankly at the viscous liquid. "We're in Aya's mind, how the hell did I get hurt?"

"You seen the Matrix?" asked Schuldich brusquely, annoyed at having to explain this to a non-psychic. All he wanted to do was wake Aya up and get out, before the red head's willful mind found a way to kill him.

"Of course I've seen the Matrix," replied Yohji. Schu felt a brief flash of annoyance and frustration from the blonde.

"Well, people's minds are sorta like the Matrix, you find one strong enough and their killing you in here kills you out there." Schu knelt down next to Aya and started wrapping a binding around his form. As long as Aya was held to this form it would be easier for them to figure out a way to wake him up.

"Aya wasn't trying to kill me."

_Coulda fooled me_thought Schuldich. He finished the binding with a quick pull on his power.

"Anything could fool you Schuldich," said Yohji. He had walked over to where Aya lay and tentatively reached out to brush his fingers over the bruises on the man's neck.

Schuldich stared after Yohji, too shocked to speak. The man had heard Schuldich's thoughts, something that not even Bradley could do. Yohji'd just answered Schu's thoughts and hadn't even seemed to notice. Schu _had_ lowered some of his shields to bind Aya, but Yohji didn't have the power to pick up his thoughts, and he hadn't been projecting.

_Will it happen again? Let's see, you really suck, Yohji.__ And I mean it. Y__ou're such a fucking lollypop, going all__ sickly sweet whenever your pre__cious Aya gets hurt. It's like watching a soap opera, too much drama and too little depth. That's what you are: shallow. A shallow bastard that__ just pretends to care for people because if you didn't__ then__then… But…__ he really does care__ doesn't he__ Even about me,__ I can feel it…_

"Schuldich!"

Schuldich looked up at Yohji, the issue of hearing other's thoughts completely forgotten over Schuldich's sudden realization of Yohji's pure _goodness_. He actually did care for Aya, and more astonishingly he cared about Schuldich too. It was something Schu hadn't felt before. Sure, Bradley cared, but he was so good at hiding his thoughts that Schuldich had never really felt it. With Yohji it was as plain as day, and somehow satisfied a craving Schuldich had never acknowledged as having.

"Schuldich, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," said Schuldich, unsure of his reaction to the sudden epiphany, but absolutely certain he didn't want to talk about it. And he had the perfect distraction to keep any talk on the subject from taking place.

"Well then, while we're here lets figure out what happened to Aya," said Schuldich in a painfully bright voice as he dropped the shielding keeping them out of Aya's nightmares.

* * *

Yuri knocked lightly on the solid wooden door. It was old oak, with highlights that shown in dark reds or gold in certain light. It was powerful without being imposing, magnificent and yet subtle. The running joke was that whoever had built the door had known the kind of person who would come to use it.

"Enter."

Yuri slowly pushed the door open—it had no handle or lock—and winced expectantly at the creak that didn't come. It led into a small office that seemed so much bigger with the high ceiling. There was a couch to the left and the soft yellow light from the lamps made it glow a deep maroon. There were no windows, but the light easily illuminated all the items inside, including an old desk made of the same wood as the door.

"Consort's Second, what can I do for you?" asked the man sitting at the desk. He had one of the darkest skin tones that Yuri had ever seen in someone not from African descent. He was what some would call a dark Irish, though only because he had Irish blood, dark, dark hair and emerald green eyes that changed shade with his mood. Now they were a light green, a good day.

"We are in need of a healer," said Yuri, following protocol and not asking the question directly. Healing was volunteer only. No healer could be coerced or forced into healing or their abilities would simply not work. In some cases even asking was seen as a demand and would block their abilities, hence dance around the request.

"I would be glad to help," the man replied. "I assume you need the assistance as soon as possible?"

"Yes."

The man stood up and escorted Yuri out of the room, flicking the lights off behind him, showing Yuri a glimpse of a dark, shadowed room before the door closed behind them. They began down the hall, Yuri leading by a half step.

"Yuri?" asked the man, dropping the earlier formality.

"Yes?"

"Who is it that needs to be healed?"

"A group of people coming to stand witness for the Consortium," replied Yuri. "You won't know anyone except Red."

"Red?"

Yuri sent him a questioning look. "Yeah, Rori, don't you remember Red?"

"Yes. Yes, of course. I remember Red." His dark lips curled up slightly in a smile.

* * *

"I still can't believe Rori's working for Phelan. I mean…"

Crawford groaned, holding himself very still in anticipation of the pain. His body throbbed, and any movement aggravated the sensation. The mumbled conversation continued around him, while he sat, trying to simply acclimate himself to the pain.

The vision hit him like a ton of bricks hidden inside a mactruck. One minute he was fine, in pain, but fine, and the next he felt his body go into convulsions as one of the strongest visions he had ever had hit him.

Schuldich lay crumpled on the floor, blood dripping out of his ear onto the dirty tile. One man fired a shotgun at the retreating back of another, hitting hard enough that the man fell to one knee. An old woman pulled a knife out of the chest of a younger. Farfarello picked up the limp body of Nagi. Someone screamed an order. Blood spattered on the wall. Abrupt violence. Pain. Screaming.

The wide eyes of Abyssinian crying blood.

"Crawford. Crawford!"

Crawford came out of the vision enough to feel the pain, then promptly passed out.

* * *

Yohji woke to the sound of someone crying. No, not really crying, but the breathing as if they wanted to. He followed the half-made sobs into a small room with stone walls and floor. There was something curled on the floor in the corner and Yohji's horror refused to let him acknowledge it.

But the sobbing was insistent and Yohji soon found himself moving toward the person, kneeling down in front of the redhead, taking his friend's bloody and bruised hand into his own.

"Aya."

It wasn't really Aya. The man was younger, flinching and vulnerable in a way that Aya never was. But the hair was the same, as were the bright amethyst eyes and the thin, tall body, no matter how pale and bruised it was.

"Aya, it's Yohji. Oh God, it's Yohji." The crying breaths continued to echo softly in the room.

"He can't recognize you."

"Schuldich," acknowledged Yohji tiredly.

"It's a memory, he doesn't know you yet. You can't help him."

"We need to get him out of here," insisted Yohji, feeling helpless in the face of this younger, _different_ Aya.

"Not yet."

"Why not!" yelled Yohji, getting irrationally angry at his inability to help Aya. Yelling at Schu relieved the feeling only a little.

"Because we need to find out what happened. At least…we need to find out if what I think happened, did."

Yohji turned his head to look questioningly at Schuldich.

"I think…I think Aya's more like Schwartz than any of us realized. I think that he's a dormant, and that this guy, Phelan, figured it out."

"What?" asked Yohji. But Schuldich obviously wasn't hearing him anymore.

"He's always had amazing shields. And I've had so much trouble reading him. Even Bradley's powers fail around him sometimes. What if it isn't just a fluke? And if someone found out…they'd have to awaken his abilities. But they wouldn't want to do that while he had a will of his own…"

"Schuldich, what are you saying?" demanded Yohji.

Schuldich turned sad eyes to Yohji. "Watch as much as you can, I'll have to pull us out in a bit, but you need to know this to help him."

"Wha-"

They had him tied to a table. An IV was taped into the bend of this elbow and a nurse was empting syringe after syringe of drugs into the IV port. Aya moaned and open his eyes. The table was cold underneath him, like a huge slab of ice. The nerves in the tips of his fingers were tingling, and he could feel the drugs like heavy fire in his veins. A man stepped over him and started speaking, his voice was muffled, his features blurry. Blackness crept into his vision.

The guard walked him stiffly down the hall, reaching down to pull at the tight fabric over his crotch. Aya twisted, tying to pull away. The guard yanked open the door and shoved him into the room with a punch to the jaw. Aya landed hard, scraping his bare knees on the cold floor and slamming his head into the opposite wall. The ground reached up to smack him as he fell dizzily to the hard cement, reeling from the blow. Aya stared dazedly as the guard shut the door firmly behind him and began to walk on awkward legs further into the room.

A man held him against the wall, his fingers wrapped around Aya's throat. The bruise on his cheek was fading, a month's worth of healing, but the rest of his body was covered with bruises and his bones could be seen through his too pale skin. The man was repeating something, over and over again, a command of some sort. Soon enough Aya was nodding, a resigned, hopeless movement.

The door opened, a harsh slash of light in the dark recess. Footsteps walked steadily closer. Someone pulled Aya up off the floor, wrapped his naked body in an old coat, and helped him gently, carefully out the door.

Yohji woke to the hushed quiet reserved for ancient ruins and funerals.

"Fuck," mumbled Schuldich from somewhere over the edge of the bed. "I was right."

The soft curse broke the stillness of the room. Yohji was suddenly in motion, reaching out to comfort Aya who very obviously did _not_ want comfort and was pushing himself off the bed just as fast as he could. Yohji saw the way his arms trembled and his knees almost buckled when his feet hit the floor.

"Aya, stop-"

"Get out, Yohji."

"Let me help-"

"Get out!" Aya's voice broke on the last syllable, but all his face showed was determination and anger.

_Say 'Listen to me, sit down'._

_Schuldich?_

_Just say it._ Yohji felt a wave of bitter sadness over the connection.

"Listen to me, sit down," Yohji said tentatively, not really expecting a response. Or at least not a good one, no one ordered Aya around. They were most likely to get a sword in the gut if they tried.

Aya froze, turned a couple shades paler, and sat down right there on the floor.

_What the hell?_

_Be careful what you say to him_, sent Schuldich. _He may have been able to ignore most of the conditioning before, but after running into his trainer and then reliving the nightmares he won't be able to resist them much._

_What the hell is going on, Sc__h__uldich?_

_We don't have time for me to give an explanation, Blondie. Just get him to talk to you._

_What__ do you expect me to talk to him about? That he was tortured? That…that I think he was r-raped!?_ Yohji stumbled over the last word, even in his mind. Aya and the concept had never went together, should never go together.

_It doesn't matter, just don't order him to do something. He'll fight you just on principle if you do that. __Show him that you're not a threat, that you're not part of the training. _Don't_ order him to do anything, don't even phrase something like an order. He needs to shake as much of the training off as he can, and having someone he trust__s__ around will help._

_How the hell do you know this?_

Silence. The sudden loss of Schuldich's thoughts in Yohji's mind was like a cold wind blowing through him.

Knowing he had said something wrong, and not sure if he wanted to know if his sudden, unwanted deduction about Schuldich was true, Yohji left Schuldich in peace and eased down in front of Aya. He was still sitting on the floor, legs folded under him and so pale you could see the blue of his veins through his skin. His eyes were focused on nothing in the room.

"Hey, Aya," said Yohji, at a loss of what to say that would actually help. How was he supposed to help? There was nothing he could do but sit here and try not to say the wrong thing, and that didn't seem like helping at all.

Aya's eyes focused on his face, but he didn't say anything.

"Well, I guess you'll never want to get near me again, now that I've held you while you slept," Yohji said nervously. It was a sad, pathetic joke even to his ears.

"Yohji," said Aya. Just that, one word, 'Yohji'. It was all Yohji could do to keep from laughing in relief, or crying from the memory of what Aya had gone through, only to come out of it and say his name.

The sat in silence for awhile, Yohji having no idea what to say and Aya visibly pulling himself back together. Every once in a while he trembled, a fine tremor running down his spine and when that happened Yohji wanted to do something, say something, but he never did, not sure what would help and what would harm the situation.

It seemed he had made the right choice, for soon enough Aya was back to his normal skin tone, his breathing calm and precise. The look of determination and will he sent Yohji way was pure Aya, the strong, capable leader he was used to.

"Where are the others?" he asked, a leader looking out for his team. Yohji nearly smiled, but didn't since he wasn't sure how Aya would take the action.

"There in the next room, perfectly fine under the circumstances." Yohji hesitated, then decided to go for it, "Aya, about what we saw-"

Aya didn't say a word, but Yohji still chocked himself off. Aya's whole posture said 'I don't want to talk about it' and was overlaid with so much pain that Yohji suddenly didn't care if not knowing would bother him, he would suffer anything not to harm Aya in this moment.

"Phelan," Aya surprised Yohji by saying, his voice small and vulnerable. "Phelan," he repeated, his voice strong and angry. "Is one of the enemies I left behind."

Encouraged by Aya's words Yohji asked the one question that was truly bothering him. They had all been tortured in one form or another at some point in their lives, Omi by his family, Ken by his old lover, Yohji on the few missions that he had been caught. It was still terrible, but it was something that they understood. If Aya…"That guard…Aya…were you-"

"He didn't touch me. That was the one thing Phelan couldn't stand for: no one got to touch me but him."

_Does that mean he raped you himself Aya?__ Is that what you're hinting at?_

"The others are in the other room?" asked Aya, obviously in a bid to change the subject.

Yohji decided he'd go along, this was enough soul bearing to last him a while. "Yeah, just you, me and Schuldich in here."

"Schuldich?"

Yohji looked back to motion Schuldich forward but the telepath wasn't paying him any attention. His head was cocked to the side and his eyes unfocused, like a teenager listening intently to his iPod. Yohji recognized the look from all the times Schuldich had talked to him mind to mind.

_Something's going on in the other room._

Someone screamed.

Yohji jumped up off the floor and limped quickly toward the door, his leg wound stiff from the inactivity. He shoved the door open hard, banging it against the wall. He took another step forward and his leg crumpled underneath him. Schuldich caught him for a second, and then charged past him, heading towards the commotion.

A tall, lean man was holding Nagi's wrist, pinning him to the couch, as the boy flinched and cried out in pain.

* * *

Alright, no cliffhangers next chapter. They're starting to annoy me and I'm the one _writing them!_

The first time I wrote the section about Aya being a dormant, I accidently wrote doormat instead. I got very confused when I reread it (it was six in the morning at the time, so no brain cells to speak of) and said out loud "Aya's a doormat?" My friend (who had about the same brain cell count as I did) started laughing and saying "doormat, doormat!" over and over again. Needless to say I had to reread my reread the next day, since I didn't get much work done after that.

10/24/07

1:03 PM


	21. A Shadowed Healer

The man knelt before the throne quaking in his boots so badly that he nearly fell and disgraced himself further. The king watched this in dark, disapproving silence. The man had displeased him, and he couldn't imagine any way the man could make up for it.

The man abased himself further and held out a sheaf of papers with white, shaking fingers. "Here, Your Majesty, I've brought them all. I-"

"You're too late," boomed the king's voice. "Do not think this will save you. You have failed your mission, and worse, you have displeased your king." The king lifted his gaze above the man's figure to stare resolutely into the empty space at the back of the throne room. "Off with his head!"

"Sir," said someone off to the side that the man couldn't see. "I would caution against that, Your Majesty, sir. If we kill him we'll never find out if the sexual tension that just _sparks_ between the two main characters ever gets resolved. And what about her baby? We'll never find out who the father is if the writer's dead."

The man stayed silent except for a muffled sniveling as the king considered this. Finally, after a strained wait, the king said in his best commanding voice, "Then he shall live. But I expect the next chapter by tomorrow!"

Heh.

I'm actually a girl, and I don't think I'm getting anyone pregnant, but somehow this was funnier as is and better than "I'm sorry I'm so late! Bad me!"

* * *

"What I wouldn't do for Rori's healing abilities right about now," grumbled Shige as he wrapped another layer of bandage around the wound he was redressing. It was another in a long line of cuts and bullet holes that peppered Crawford's body. Fortunately the precog had been unconscious for the entire process and had been spared the pain—and Shige the daunting mess of an assassin and psychic awake and injured.

Shouhei watched this from his seat across the aisle. He should be calling Sora, or Yuri, letting them know that they were coming in with valuable information that implicated Phelan, but listening to Shige rant under his breath was much more entertaining.

"But, oh, no, Rori's on Phelan's side and probably wouldn't help us if we had Aladdin's treasure and a conga line full of pretty women for him. He's more likely to curl his spindly little fingers around my wrist and say 'you wanted healing, yes?' in that aristocratic, snotty little voice of his and then _suck_ the life right out of me. Why healers are such good killers, I'll never know. He can touch you and heal almost anything, or he can touch you and stop you heart. Guy needs to get his ego deflated…" Shige trailed off. He finished tucking the bandage, then pulled Crawford's pant leg back into place. He reached up and adjusted the oxygen mask that had slipped during his administrations. Shouhei was reminded once

again about just how bad of a shape Crawford was in. "And then he needs to be whapped for ever working for Phelan."

"Doesn't that mean you should get 'whapped' too?" asked Murata over the intercom.

"Shush up, Murata, before you crash the plane because you can't multitask," retorted Shige.

Shouhei heard Murata's sigh over the intercom. "Whatever, Shige. We're about an hour out and there's no traffic in our way."

"Thank you, Murata," said Shouhei.

"I'm going to go find some munchies," said Shige as he walked through the compartment door at the back of the plane. "Back in a bit!"

Shaking his head at Shige antics Shouhei pulled out his cell phone. He tried Sora first, but was unable to reach her. He dialed up Yuri next and only had to wait through one ring before it was picked up.

"Yes?"

"This is Shouhei Ito. I have some information for the upcoming meeting."

"Information?"

"It's about Phelan."

"Ah." Yuri's voice became muffled, as if he was speaking away from the phone. "Go on ahead. I'll join you in a minute." There was a slight pause and then Yuri's voice can back on the line. "What about Phelan?"

"I have documented orders from Phelan for assassinations that I don't believe were approved by the Consortium, and some inside information about Phelan's operations."

"Who's assassinations?"

"Two members of Schwartz."

"Both unsanctioned. Good. Can you make the meeting?"

"It's about an hour before our plane lands."

"Then you'll arrive just in time."

"Yes. Ah…Is Red alright?"

"Why would you think otherwise?"

"We are talking about Phelan."

"True." There was a sigh over the phone. "He ran into Phelan earlier, but he's with his team now. Just go straight to the meeting chamber when you get here. We-" Shouhei caught the edge of muffled yelling.

"Yuri?"

"I'm sorry, I have to go. Make sure you're armed when you get here."

The line went dead just as Shouhei opened his mouth to ask what was going on. He pulled the phone away from his ear, looking at the screen in puzzlement to check if Yuri really had hung up on him at such an inopportune moment. He had, the screen was back to its normal background.

A groan made him look up to see Crawford had woken up enough to twist in his seat, and then fallen back into unconsciousness. Shige, who must had walked in during the phone call, adjusted the oxygen mask once again and then took the seat across from Shouhei.

"So?" he asked.

Shouhei pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed before speaking. "Find the weapons store on this plane and get everyone loaded up, it seems there's some trouble at the Consortium."

"Crawford's going to be less than useless if it comes to a fight, infection's set in and he has a fever, not to mention he's hopped up on pain killers," commented Shige.

"Then we'll have to keep him out of the fight," replied Shouhei, already thinking about other matters. "Murata," he said to the intercom. "Can you shave some time off that hour? We need to get there as quickly as possible."

"Working on it, boss."

* * *

Nagi eyed Omi warily from his position on the couch. Bombay was pacing on the other side of the room, running his hand through his hair in worry or frustration every few minutes. He looked pale and Nagi caught him wincing once when he moved his shoulder too fast. Nagi hadn't known the Weiss was injured, but could now see the bulk of bandages beneath his shirt. Nagi looked down at his similarly bandaged wrist; it seemed this little adventure had taken its toll on everyone, Schwartz and Weiss alike.

Speaking of taking its toll…Nagi looked at the closed door behind which were Schuldich, Abyssinian, and Balinese. It had been quiet since Balinese had rushed in earlier, but Nagi imagined he could feel tension radiating out of the room in waves. Though that could be true of both the rooms that connected to where Nagi sat now. After ten minutes of watching Omi pace—and unsuccessfully trying to calm him down—the Weiss, Ken, had retreated unhappily into the other room. Nagi had tried to follow since Farfie was already in the room and they didn't need a fight breaking out, but he had found himself too tired to stand up. So far that room had been quiet as well, but Nagi swore he could feel the tension.

"What is _going on?!_" Omi suddenly burst out.

Nagi looked up, startled, but Omi wasn't talking to him. It looked more like he was talking to his feet as he glared down at the floor, scuffing his shoe on the carpet. He moved as if to throw his hands up in the air in frustration then hissed, slowly lowering his arms and wincing. With a childish scowl on his face he plopped down into a chair with a huff.

"Too bad we don't have a computer," said Nagi idly, equally frustrated with the lack of information. "Then we could get their files."

"If only," mutter Omi. "I just…it's just…everyone's getting so _hurt_. I can't stand it. I mean, this shouldn't be happening. It just shouldn't," he ended in barely more than a whisper.

Nagi was silent, unsure of what to say. They sat like that, Omi wrapped up in his thoughts and Nagi uncomfortably silent, until the door to the hallway opened.

Omi was up off his chair in an instant and positioned between Nagi and the intruder. Nagi blinked, startled at the protective action.

"I was told you are in need of a healer," said the man at the door. Nagi only got the impression that the man was tall since Omi blocked most of his view.

"Where's Yuri?" demanded Omi, still tensed for a fight.

"In the hallway, he got a phone call," answered the stranger.

"And you are?"

"Rori, a healer. I see you aren't too badly injured, but you friend obviously needs attention," said the man, Rori. Nagi didn't like his tone of voice, it seemed to calm for the situation, too calculated.

Omi looked worriedly over his shoulder at Nagi, then directed his gaze back to the man at the door. "And you can heal him? You don't have any medical supplies."

Then man sighed, though somehow Nagi didn't think the sound was genuine, and explained briskly, "I'm a psychic; I can heal with my hands."

"Don't psychics use their minds?" questioned Omi.

"Some are activated by touch," commented Nagi. "Like a clairvoyant or reader. Though healers are one of the rarest of those types."

"Then I'm glad we have one now."

_Yeah, very convenient isn't it?_

Despite Nagi's misgivings when Omi moved to the side and let the man pass, he didn't protest. Getting healed was worth the risk of this being a trap. They needed to be healed and the man had to know that Omi would kill him if he killed Nagi, so he wasn't very likely to kill them now.

The man knelt down next to the couch and examined Nagi's wrist with his eyes first, then he reached with long, thin fingers and grabbed hold of Nagi's wrist.

The sudden pain crashed against him in a tidal wave, so overwhelming that he couldn't even hear himself think—but he could hear himself scream.

Someone yelled, a door cashed open, something else thudded on the ground. Nagi heard it all in between the deafening beats of his heart. His world had narrowed to the pulsing pain that resonated in groundbreaking shakes through his body.

"NAGI!"

_Oh, it_ hurt.

"NAGI!"

The pain had receded enough for him to realize it was Schu who was shouting his name. His vision came back slowly and the pain continued to retreat. He felt a little numb.

Schuldich had opened his mouth to yell again when Nagi caught his gaze. The older man calmed in that instant, then winced and pulled his arm up around his chest. He sunk down on the couch next to Nagi and then turned to watch the commotion on the other side of the room.

Omi had the healer, Rori, pinned up against the wall. It shouldn't have worked; Omi was at least a foot shorter than the other man and had nowhere near the mass. But contrary to that Omi really did have the man pinned to the wall, a ballpoint pen at his throat. The tip was pressed so deeply into the taller man's skin that even the blunt end was drawing blood. Nagi couldn't see Omi face from where he was sitting, but found he didn't really want to. Would it be contorted with honest rage, or the blank, cold face of a killer?

"What were you doing to him?" snarled Omi, pressing the man a little further against the wall. Fafarello stood a little to the left of the two, one of his knives clutched in his hands, but seemed content to let Omi handle the healer. Ken and Yohji stood to the left and Nagi couldn't see the other Weiss.

"Healing him," answered the man.

"What in hell is going on?" snapped another angry voice. Yuri stormed into the room and went to pull Omi off Rori. Omi started to fight back, but Yuri easily disarmed him and tossed him back toward Nagi and the couch. Omi landed easily, so easily that Nagi wondered if he was used to being thrown about because he was so young. He stood up and started for Yuri, but Nagi grabbed his shoulder before he could attack again. It wasn't until Omi turned to him and froze that Nagi realized he had used his previously wounded limb.

"You actually healed me," mumbled Nagi incredulously.

"That is what I came here to do," replied Rori. He was running his fingers over the wound Omi had given him with the ballpoint pen, wincing. When his hand came away the blood was gone and the wound healed. "Though I forgot to warn you about the pain."

Omi was now ignoring the others completely, running his fingers delicately over Nagi's wrist and watching his face for signs of pain. Nagi smiled reassuringly at him and pulled Omi up to sit next to him on the couch. He moved a little too quickly when Nagi pulled on his arm and again Nagi saw the bulky bandages around his shoulder.

"Can you heal without it being that painful?" asked Nagi.

"Some of the bones in your wrist were shattered, not just broken, and I had to shift them back into place through the nerves. So, yes, it won't always be that painful."

"Omi?" Nagi asked, turning to look pointedly at the blonde's shoulder. Omi hesitated and for a second Nagi could see an assassin's unwillingness to trust in his eyes, then he nodded.

Someone's cell phone rang before it could get any further than that. Everyone in the room looked over to see Yuri pull a small, black flip-phone out of his pocket and answer it. There was a beat of silence when a few unreadable emotions flicked across the man's face, then he hung up without saying a word.

"Sora's plane just landed. The meeting will be in an hour. Until then, Rori can heal you and show you where the weapons cache in this suit is. Mari will come escort you down to the meeting when it's time," said Yuri. "I have to go and make sure everything is ready. Red," he said as he turned to Aya, who had been standing quietly in the doorway to the other room throughout this. "You'll explain to them how this is going to work?" After receiving Aya nod of accent, Yuri swiftly left the room.

"Well, it certainly looks like you've got yourself hurt," said Rori to Aya after Yuri left. He took a step forward but Aya motioned him away.

"Heal the others first," said Aya. "I'll go open the weapons cache. Farfarello, Hidaka, come with me." Nagi blinked in surprise when Farfie followed without protest. He'd have expected the man to at the very least growl and make reluctant gesture. The three of them left through a side door Nagi hadn't noticed before.

"Now," said Rori as he knelt before Omi. "Let's start with this shoulder, shall we?" When Omi made no protest Rori reached forward and pushed his shirt back over his shoulder. Nagi hissed in sympathy at the dried blood that crusted the bandages.

Rori removed the bandages carefully with a pair of scissors that he pulled out of his pocket. The wound was small, clean, and obviously a bullet hole. There was a little bit of wet blood, but otherwise it looked like it had been healing well. Rori pressed his hand over the wound and frowned slightly. Then Omi gasped and his free hand dug into Nagi's leg. Nagi grabbed his hand to keep him from clawing holes in his leg and then it was over. Rori pulled back and Omi relaxed, his face free of pain.

"Me next," said Schuldich from the other side of Omi. He started to lean forward in his seat only to stop and wince. "Broken ribs are _sooo_ much fun," he grumbled.

The only indication Schuldich gave of the pain the healing must have caused him was a drawn out hiss. Nagi noticed Balinese stepping closer at the sound, a concerned expression quickly smothered on his face, and wondered just what had been happening between the two. He was well aware the two had hit it off as like-minded people (sex talk traverses the biggest canyons) but the concern was a little odd for recent enemies.

What was even odder was that when Balinese expressed reluctance about Rori healing _his_ leg Schu told him, "It's fine. Just let him," and Balinese _listened_. Nagi nearly dropped his jaw in shock at the comradeship? friendship? trust? that that showed.

Farfie, Ken, and Abyssinian came back in while Rori was healing Balinese. Farfie carried the most weapons, handguns, a shotgun, a whip, and lots and lots of knives. Ken also carried a shotgun, some metal knuckle coverings, and a bag of darts and throwing knives. Abyssinian held two katanas and nothing else.

"Red, sit," said Rori as he finished up with Balinese. Abyssinian, still holding the two katanas, sat down on the smaller couch only to have Balinese slid in beside him. Rori was kneeling down in front of him when the door opened.

It was the old woman that had escorted them off the train, looking a little more frazzled then she had earlier. "Rori, you need to get going. Phelan's looking for you and he's not in the best of moods."

Nagi saw Abyssinian pale out of the corner of his eye and watched as Balinese inched closer to his teammate. Abyssinian's expression was blank, Balinese worried, and, oddly enough, Schu wore that same worried expression.

"Go," said Abyssinian to the healer. "The wound will be fine on its own." The rest of the Weiss team looked ready to protest but Abyssinian overrode them with another, "go," and Rori left without a backward glance.

As soon as the door closed Balinese snapped angrily at Abyssinian, "Aya, that wound is not-"

"It's fine, Yohji. Now shut up, I need to explain to you how this meeting will work. We only have a half an hour before it starts and you all need to understand the protocol if you expect to survive."

"Protocol?" guffawed Schu. "What protocol can this bunch of losers-"

Abyssinian just snapped, "Enough so that if you miss a single thing and insult someone they'll shoot you full of holes before you take another breath."

No one dared to speak after that.

* * *

I apologize for any errors, editig this chapter got put on the backburner and I never got around to it. I hope it wasn't too terrible and you liked it for the content...if not the grammer.

03/24/08

6:15 PM


End file.
